Science of Cooking

If you stop at a roadside restaurant anywhere between North Dakota and Oklahoma, you might not immediately get a sense of culinary diversity. Many menus in rural and small-town middle America consist…

It’s nearly Christmas in the foggy Nahuelbuta Range of south-central Chile and berries the size and color of ping-pong balls are ripening in small gardens...

There are two ways to produce seafood: catch fish in the wild or farm your own. Seafood farming is often called “aquaculture”. Aquaculture is dominated by the farming of fish, but also includes other organisms, such as crustaceans and aquatic plants.

In which a pasta-filled rabbit hole leads to an unexpected place

The photonic structure of cut muscle tissues reveals that the well-ordered gratings diffract light, producing iridescent colours. Cut fibrils protruding from the muscle surface create a two-dimensional periodic array, which diffract light at specific wavelengths upon illumination. However, this pho...

How centuries of milk marketing warped the way we think about dairy and nutrition.

Is red meat bad for you? A multiverse analysis shows that the answer varies by analytic method. The takeaway beyond meat is that this approach should be used for most observational research.

A popular saying in Argentina has it that “a mate is denied to no one”

Appearing in the written record as early as 2300 BCE, saffron can be traced in foodways around the globe, despite the finicky nature of its harvest.

Reuters exclusively reported that major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy

Did you know fungi naturally produce all the ingredients needed for a cruelty-free meat substitute? Our scientists are exploring how tuning the genomes of mushrooms and molds can transform these food sources into gourmet, nutrient-packed meals made with minimal processing and a light environmental f...

New food packaging products sold in the U.S., such as takeout boxes and fast-food wrappers, will no longer contain harmful "forever chemicals" known as PFAS.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is developing new and rapid methods to rapidly screen and authenticate the origin of foods like extra virgin olive oil.

His brilliant method of pollination is now used by all vanilla growers.

After several years of pandemic-driven price spikes at the grocery store, retail food price inflation is slowing down. That's good news for consumers, especially those in low-income households, who spend a proportionally larger share of their income on food.

Not everyone knows what a pawpaw is. Until more recently, it has been discarded and forgotten, falling in and out of favor over the years. For some, it is a luscious dessert, a delightful treasure hiding in the woods. For others, it is, to say the least, an acquired taste (and texture). It is an eni

You've heard of lab grown meat, are you ready for rice-grown beef? International researchers have developed a beef-rice hybrid they say could be a protein-rich food of the future. The team says they took muscle and fat stem cells from cows, and transplanted them into grains of rice - because

A new report lays out two very different paths forward.

Cellular agriculture—the production of meat from cells grown in bioreactors rather than harvested from farm animals—is taking leaps in technology that are making it a more viable option for the food industry. One such leap has now been made at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TU...

Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat.

What are the cardiometabolic effects of a healthy plant-based (vegan) vs a healthy omnivorous diet among identical twins during an 8-week intervention?In this randomized clinical trial of 22 healthy, adult, identical twin pairs, those consuming a healthy ...

Arquà Petrarca is known as the final resting place of a Renaissance patriarch – and the source of a fabled liquor whose name means "to live in bliss", made from the jujube fruit.

The yellowfin tuna commonly enjoyed in sashimi, poke bowls and salad sandwiches may soon disappear from these dishes if current over-exploitation rates remain unchanged, especially in the Indian Ocean.

Experts explain why it’s such a nutritional powerhouse and if all varieties are created equal.

The association between a plant-based diet (vegetarianism) and extended life span is increasingly criticised since it may be based on the lack of representative data and insufficient removal of confounders such as lifestyles.We examined the association ...

After a year-long cheddar-making experiment, scientists have unraveled the microbial underpinnings of the cheese's buttery flavor

Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! This essay will hopefully be the first post in a series (II, III, IV, A) covering some of th…

High-salt, processed noodles have become a favourite cheap meal, especially in developing countries, but nutritionists warn of the health costs

Spices are plant products used in flavoring foods and beverages. For thousands of years, aromatic plant materials have been used in food preparation and preserv

A study of food residues found in ancient pottery has shown what the people of ancient China ate, which included millet, rice, yellow croaker and mandarin fish.