Web resource for polysaccharides/hydrocolloids.

Prof. Martin Chaplin of the London South Bank Univ. has a very good web resource for polysaccharides/hydrocolloids.

It can be found here...

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/hydro.html

Did you know ?...

Gums that are used in food applications can be used to temporarily bind and stabilize soil ?
Guar, pre-gelatinized starch, and psyllium [mainly arabinoxlyan and better known as Metamucil] are recommended, with application rates codified such places as in the The California Stormwater Best Management Practice Handbooks
http://www.cabmphandbooks.com/Documents/Construction/EC-5.pdf

I tried it with partial success recently.
The shiny stripe along the top of the cut is where the gums have hydrated and penetrated the soil cracks. This has been partially successful and (fingers crossed) the section past the step in the wall is still OK. The closer section caved in well behind where the stabilizers were placed - taking the whole lot with them.

Is molecular gastronomy just hype ?

A new post from Martin Lersch over at Khymos.

http://blog.khymos.org/2009/01/26/has-molecular-gastronomy-reached-the-plateau-of-productivity/

Personally I think it's just a semantic argument and people can interpret the term "molecular gastronomy" as they please.

Meanwhile other types of "gastronomy" and foodways will go on as they've always done.

Peter Reinhart TED video - The ART OF BAKING BREAD

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/peter_reinhart_on_bread.html

Herve This is blogging

http://hervethis.blogspot.com/

One of the founders of the molecular gastronomy movement is blogging [mostly in French].


Read more about it here

http://blog.khymos.org/2009/01/17/herve-this-is-blogging/

POLYMER - DSC - DMA - GLASSY resources

The Polymer Science learning Center at the Dept of Polymer Science at Southern Miss.

http://pslc.ws/

The "Macrogalleria" where the rubber (pardon the pun) hits the road.

http://pslc.ws/mactest/index.htm

See
http://pslc.ws/mactest/tg.htm for the glass transition

and this for a demo of...

http://pslc.ws/macrog/demos/bball.htm

See...
http://pslc.ws/mactest/dsc.htm for Differential scanning calorimetry

http://pslc.ws/mactest/crystal.htm for polymer crystallinity

This is mostly about synthetic polymers but translates closely to food polymers

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Mechanical analyses

What is Dynamic Mechanical Analysis, DMA? http://www.triton-technology.co.uk/pdf/TTInf_DMA.pdf

http://www.triton-technology.co.uk/ for DMA application notes

A konjac glucomannan resource

H. Zhang , M. Yoshimura , K. Nishinari , M. A. K. Williams , T. J. Foster, I. T. Norton. 2001. Gelation behaviour of konjac glucomannan with different molecular weights

Biopolymers Volume 59 Issue 1, Pages 38 - 50

The full text PDF can be sourced through the OSU library via the Biopolymers journal home page

>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<

Also known as "Miracle noodles"

Honey crystallization

I guess honey gives you energy; therefore why it's a topic for the DOE.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen06/gen06278.htm

From a more conventional sources - the N a t i o n a l H o n e y B o a r d F o o d T e c h n o l o g y / Pr o d u c t R e s e a r ch Program
http://www.honey.com/downloads/crystallization.pdf

Scienceline The NYU Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.
http://scienceline.org/2007/04/09/ask-westly-crystallizedhoney/

Some food rheology primers and resources

OTHER FOOD RHEOLOGY PRIMERS: it might help look with these different perspectives

-From Pawan Takhar, Ph.D.Assistant Professor - Food Engineering at Texas Tech U.
apps.depts.ttu.edu/afs/home/ptakhar/Teaching/Rheology/IntroRheology_ptakhar.ppt

If the link does not work try typing "rheology ptakhar" into gOOgle; it should be the first hit.


-From Dr Mukund V Karwe (http://foodsci.rutgers.edu/karwe/) from Rutgers Food Science
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7469395/Food-Rheology


Why food rheology ?
Why might a school - not us - have an entire department devoted to food rheology ?
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/foodrheology/


There are entire symposiums devoted to food rheology - for example -The International Symposium on Food Rheology and Structure - ISFRS 2009

http://www.isfrs.ethz.ch/

Proceeding from the last 3 symposia can be found here
https://www.isfrs.ethz.ch/proc/index

And food rheology hits the big time in 2005...

This abstract from NATURE http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v4/n10/abs/nmat1496.html could be a interesting read too. You should be able to access the full text PDF from a OSU based computer. Raffaele Mezzenga is an Assoc. Prof. at the Polymer Physics Group of Université de Fribourg Universität Freiburg in Switzerland.

If anyone develops a deep interest in this aspect of food science - this free pdf book by Prof. James F Steffe of Michigan State U. is a good resource...
http://www.egr.msu.edu/~steffe/freebook/offer.html



WHY STUDY FRENCH FRY CRUST FRACTURE MECHANICS ?
Kelly Ross and Martin Scanlon. A fracture mechanics analysis of the texture of fried potato crust. Journal of Food Engineering 62 (2004) 417–423.

Well according to the authors, and I quote, "In spite of their [potatoes] economic importance, the potato processing industry has had difficulty in evaluating and controlling one of the french fry’s most important quality attributes––fry texture".

The aim was then...
"an investigation of the fracture properties of the crust of fried potato. As stated by Lima and Singh (2001a), there is a paucity of information on the mechanical properties of this component of a very popular processed food. Well defined measurements of mechanical properties are especially important for engineering modelling of the effect of given unit operations on the texture of individual regions of the fry".

An answer looking for a problem ? Maybe.