Flavors and Fragrances--How They Can Manipulate Us

I well remember the day I was going through a buffet line with my former supervisor, Percy. As we passed each entree, I told him the chemical name of the predominant flavoring or coloring in each food. When we got to those fake "crab" legs, with that red coloring on top, I told Percy that it wasn't crab at all, but a gelatinized cod that was colored with some red dye number 5. The woman ahead of us in line apparently had enough and asked me to stop talking. She wanted to enjoy her lunch. I assured her that, if the crab legs were real crab, the red color is not a dye, but a potent, highly-colored toxin. However, it was in low concentration, so it wouldn't put her into anaphylactic shock. I had the best of intentions.

My first career job as a chemist was in flavors and fragrances. I worked for a company that made natural and unnatural chemicals for foods and fragrances. This is a fascinating area of study, especially when I began to realize that chemicals are what stimulate our senses of taste and smell.

Our sense of smell depends upon air-borne molecules that are emitted by some source. How do molecules become air-borne? There are a couple ways. The principal way molecules become airborne is when they evaporate. Smaller molecules can just float right into the air. This should be nothing surprising. Water on the sidewalk after a rain will “disappear” due to evaporation. When you smell fresh fruit, like an orange, the fragrance components in the orange evaporate from the peel, and you can smell the molecules floating in the air.

Another way molecules become air-borne is when they are associated with small particles, such as dust or smoke. Cigarette smoke, for example, consists of microscopic particles. When you take in smoke from a cigarette or if you breathe second-hand smoke, you breathe in the particulates containing odor molecules. Generally speaking, breathing particulates, such as smoke or the air on a hazy day, is unhealthy. Particulates find their way into our lungs and are not easily expelled.

I believe that most smells we encounter are evaporated molecules. Although we associate smells with emotions such as enjoyment, feeling secure, or uncomfortable, smells are really much, much more than a way of affecting us.

For example, consider a fragrant rose. The principal chemical in that fragrance is a fairly simple one: phenethyl alcohol (pronounced: fen’-eth-il al’-co-hol). This is a molecule with eight carbons, one oxygen, and a bunch of hydrogen atoms. It almost completely captures the rose fragrance, right down to that slightly cloying note that you smell a few seconds into the experience. Roses have the machinery to make that chemical. Why would a rose want to make phenethyl alcohol? Darwin's Theory of Evolution has an answer. The phenethyl alcohol attracts beneficial insects, such as bees. Bees love the sweetness of roses and spend a good deal of time around them. In their rapture, the bees gather some pollen on their bodies and then fly off to another rose bush to get raptured all over again. The bees also collect some nectar for their honey manufacturing at the nest. So, it’s a natural win-win situation.

Nature has a very different way of “thinking” about a rose fragrance. Nature doesn’t really “care” if you enjoy the fragrance of her flower. “Enjoyment” may not even be in her vocabulary. I will tell you a word that is in her vocabulary: Information. The phenethyl alcohol in the rose is, to Nature, anyway, an information molecule. When the rose emits that fragrance, it’s say to the whole world: “Hey, all you bees and other beneficial insects out there, here I am. Just home in on my phenthyl alcohol and you will find me. Take my pollen and propagate me and my species.”

That phenethyl alcohol is also an information molecule to us humans. When we walk by a rose garden and take in that fragrance, a little voice in our heads says: “Wow! That smells so good! But, I know what I’m smelling just doesn’t smell good, I’m smelling an information molecule. It tells me that there is a rose garden nearby. That’s because the phenethyl alcohol I’m smelling right now can only come from one thing, a rose plant. It makes me relax and think calm, peaceful thoughts. I wonder if I can take one of those roses with me so I can smell it all day in my house.” Well, that’s what my little voice says.

But, let’s take it further. Look at any garden center and you will see a huge variety of roses that you can purchase and plant in your yard. Somebody decided that lots of people would want to smell that fragrance, so, they took roots and saplings from a really nice-smelling rose plant and multiplied that plant all over the world. Now, more than any rose plant in the world, the continued existence of our rose plant is assured, thanks to us humans who fell for phenthyl alcohol and the information it conveys. And, it’s all because roses emit the information molecule phenthyl alcohol. Our rose will survive longer than you or me. I wish I emitted some phenthyl alcohol, then maybe somebody would find a way to keep me around longer. Then again, I would be very attractive to bees and, for humans, that’s a down side. I suppose I will have to find another way to survive.

Speaking of surviving, roses may enjoy a visit from a bee, but, its thorns certainly discourage visits from other creatures attracted by its smell, such as deer. What creature wants thorns lodged in their gums?

Flavors and fragrances are very powerful chemicals that affect us emotionally. They can stir our memories, make us feel good, or make us feel uncomfortable. In future blogs, I will describe more of the myriad ways they influence us.

Nicotine--Where It Comes From, Where It Goes

Did you ever wonder why cigarettes have nicotine? Did you ever wonder what nicotine is?

Nicotine is a chemical compound. A chemical compound is simply a bonded collection of atoms. The atoms are bonded, or held together, mainly by electrostatic forces: positive and negative charges associated with the atoms attracting each other. A single unit of a chemical compound is a molecule. If you have a bottle of the same molecules, like nicotine molecules, you have a chemical substance. Bottles of nicotine are fairly common in chemistry laboratories. Retail price for about a pint of the stuff is around $800. The discounted price is probably around half or less.

Nicotine is in the class of alkaloids. Simply stated, alkaloids are molecules that contain the element nitrogen. In the good, old days, when our analytical methods were crude, chemists would identify alkaloids by tasting them. If they were bitter tasting, we had an alkaloid. Quinine, the stuff in the tonic water you flavor your drinks with, is an alkaloid, one of the most bitter-tasting alkaloids known. For some reason, alkaloids tend to have powerful biological effects, besides bitter taste. Some of the better-known alkaloids, such as cocaine, morphine, and ephedrine are examples. Most alkaloid names have the suffix “-ine.” When I see a chemical name ending with “-ine,” I know it’s an alkaloid.

So, why is there so much nicotine in tobacco? Is it there to get us addicted? Probably not! Nicotine is one in a class of defense chemicals. It's a poison. It's poisonous to humans, and, to a lot of insects. Consider, if the tobacco plant leaves a bad taste in an insect's mouth, or makes it sick, the insect will look for something more palatable. Thus, the tobacco plant survives because insects avoid it. If only humans were as intelligent as insects sometimes. Why are humans so attracted to poisons like nicotine or alcohol (yes, alcohol is a poison, my friends, stay tuned for a blog on that)? So, even though insects are smart enough to avoid the toxic effects of nicotine, smokers aren’t. But, before it poisons us, it addicts us.

The nicotine in tobacco is a natural component of the plant, just like the fragrance of a rose is a natural component for the rose plant. Nobody has to add nicotine to tobacco leaves, it's already there. Your average tobacco leaves have about 3% nicotine. That means, if you have 100 pounds of tobacco leaves, you have 3 pounds of nicotine spread out in the leaves.

Our good friends at the Brown & Williamson, a major tobacco company, decided that 3% nicotine was not enough in their tobacco leaves. So, in the 1970s, they cultivated a special variety of tobacco called Y1, which contains up to 6% nicotine. No wonder the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started an investigation to see if Brown & Williamson was manipulating nicotine levels to addict even more smokers. The tobacco companies also tried the other direction by making the “Lights” line, with reduced nicotine. The nicotine can be extracted away from tobacco using a process called supercritical carbon dioxide extraction.” Yes, that’s the same carbon dioxide at the center of the greenhouse gas/global warming discussion. Anyway, after the tobacco is extracted and has reduced nicotine content, the cigarette companies make their “Lights” line. And, of course, they have a whole bunch of nicotine from all that tobacco they extracted.

Did you ever wonder what the tobacco companies do with all that nicotine they extract from tobacco when they make those low-nicotine cigarettes? They sell it as an insecticide. The boll weevil that attacks cotton cannot survive exposure to nicotine. So, the cotton is saved. It is harvested and converted into all sorts of fabrics, like the fabric used for shirts. The fabric goes to a garment manufacturer to make shirts for you to buy.

So, you have your cotton shirts and smokers have their low-tar, low-nicotine smokes. Next time you see somebody ask for a carton of Marlboro Lights at the open-all-night convenience store, thank them for your shirt.

Chemistry, chemicals, molecules, nicotine, extractions are not easy concepts. I know I dumped a lot of technical stuff on you. If you want to know more about this fascinating area, please Google the terms on your browser. There is a lot of information out there, the more you read, the better your comprehension.

What's with NASA and those Rockets?

I've been around long enough to remember staring at the family's black and white TV displaying a smoking rocket for hour after hour, listening to some announcer trying to fill up that time explaining NASA nonsense at us. There were countdowns, aborted countdowns, countdowns that were holding at "T minus 6 seconds," and adding time to the clock, like the countdown was some sort of football game and the officials had to put some time on the clock.

All we wanted was to see a huge plume of exhaust shoot out of the bottom of the rocket, hear that loud thundering noise as the rocket, with three totally helpless guys, gets flung into space, or at least real high. After a couple decades, rocket launches weren't that inspirational anymore, and today we rarely see a launch on TV. But, rocket launches are still problematical, dependent on so many factors, and incredibly resource intensive. I'd like to address the whole resource thing.

It's not easy to propel a rocket into space. To get into orbit, you have to accelerate to about 18,000 mph. To escape the pull of the earth's gravity to go someplace else, like the moon or Mars, you have to achieve 25,000 mph. This is a huge job for any contraption NASA designs. And then, there's the energy required. You have to burn tons and tons of fuel to achieve these speeds. You need armies of engineers and support people, and vehicle construction facilities, and on and on and on. NASA's budget for 2009 was $17.2 billion. I guess when you compare that number with the sub-prime bailout, it's a bargain. But, look what it pays for. We have satellites, an international space station, a skateboard-like thing that rolled around on Mars, and some probes, and a few more humans in space, risking their lives to float around in free-fall.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of it. But, any forward-looking, visionary type, like myself, would take a look at the NASA program and ask: What's wrong with this picture? How are we going to truly explore space, like our solar system, our galaxy, and beyond, if we can't get a human past the moon? I don't know about you, but the thought is pretty demoralizing.

As much as we deny it, if we simply abide by Sir Isaac Newton's vision, we truly are alone, separated by vast distances of space and time from any other planet, star, or galaxy. But, we want to get out there something awful. Look at all the movies and TV shows about warp speed, alien cultures, and teletransportation. Well, my friends, right now that's nothing but a bunch of plot devices. Today, if we want to visit Mars, forget it! In Star Trek, if somebody wants to visit Andromeda, hell, just point the Enterprise in its general direction, and in a few hours at warp speed, we are there, having bar brawls with the Andromedans. If you miss by a few parsecs, no problemmo, just make a course correction, and you are there.

I don't know about you, but I don't know anybody who has a warp engine, dilithium crystals, or can fold space. Trouble is, if we don't find another way of getting from point A to point B besides using rockets and space modules, we are going to flash in and out of existence on Spaceship Earth, and nobody will be the wiser, at least nobody on Andromeda.

A while back, I really got concerned about this and wrote a letter to Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction writer who consults for NASA. I asked him if anybody was working on anything besides the big rocket approach to space travel, he actually wrote back to say that he wasn't aware of such an effort. Later on, NASA did admit to having a small section devoted to "Alternative Propulsion Technologies." Imagine my relief.

Bottom line, from where I sit, forget the rockets. Anybody can see that they can only take you so far. Sure you can throw a bunch of sattelites in orbit, but, getting free of the earth's gravity just ain't gonna cut it.

I do believe that there are alternatives to rockets. I believe there are ways of getting from Point A to Point B, even if they are separated by light years, and I believe I have some very rational, practical thoughts on how to go about accomplishing this. I'm not going into specifics here, because I'd like to bring some of my ideas to fruition, but I'd like to leave you with a question.

What is gravity?

Consider this: Although we know how gravity behaves, and we can predict how one object of a given mass can influence another object from a distance, we don't know what it truly is. For example, the sun exerts such a powerful gravitational field, that it actually holds the earth in orbit. It does this from a distance of about 93 million miles, give or take. Just how does the sun hold the earth; which is hurtling around the sun at over 33,000 mph from flying out into space? Nobody knows.

See, not even the most intelligent physicist truly knows what gravity is. Not even Einstein. Old Al had some ideas about "gravity waves," but, that doesn't explain gravity, does it? My point is that there are some fundamental things going on, things that directly affect us, and we don't know what they are, we don't know what causes them, and we sure as hell don't know how to influence them. Other things we don't really have a good bead on: light and matter come to mind, we don't know what those are, either. We do have a very good idea about what they do.

So, when it comes to understanding our world, when we consider the most fundamental forces around us, we haven't a clue. Any scientist will tell you that we can understand anything using the Scientific Method. However, with all the resources at our disposal, we don't get gravity and other forces. The scientist in me says this: We aren't seeing the whole picture. If we saw the "Big Picture" we might begin to understand some of these fundamental concepts.

There's a story I'm fond of: It's nighttime and Bert is standing under a street lamp, apparently looking for something. Ernie sees Bert, walks up to him and says: "Hey Bert, what are you looking for?"

Ernie replies: "My wallet, I lost my wallet."

Bert inquires: "Where you do you think you lost it?

Ernie points off into the darkness: "Over there someplace, I think."

"So, if you lost your wallet over there, why are you looking here?"

Ernie looks at him like he's from Mars: "I'm looking for my wallet here because the light is much better here than over there."

Is it possible that we are only looking for our answers where the light is best?

Sleep Apnea and Amusing CPAP Tricks

That's right. I have sleep apnea. You can Google it to find out the gory details. For my anecdotal take on the condition, read on.

I don't know when it started, but I'm pretty certain I haven't had sleep apnea my entire life. I'm guessing, based on the observations of those geographically near me when I am asleep, that I've had sleep apnea for at least a decade. I wasn't aware I had it. Sleep apnea occurs when you are sleeping, right? If you experience while you are awake, it isn't sleep apnea, is it? In the last couple years, though, I think I've been experiencing sleep apnea symptoms when I'm awake. Maybe we should call that "wake apnea."

I became aware of my sleep apnea long before I ever heard that expression. I recall my sons giggling in the mornings following their sleepovers at my apartment. Even though I kept my bedroom door shut, they could hear all sorts of snoring, loud gasps as if I was being suffocated, moaning, groaning, and other sundry sounds that, to teenage ear, at least, were pretty funny. Of course, I was totally unaware of this wee-hour hullaballoo I was generating. I was asleep.

Then the restless leg syndrome kicked in, so to speak. So, in addition to my gasping, proto-corpse episodes, my legs were spinning wildly out of control. I was positively dangerous in my unconscious state. About this time, I was becoming aware that my conditions were impinging on my social life. The lady I was dating, who was to become my bride, was very disturbed by my night time behaviors, and didn't know what to think. My brother, who is a doctor, heard me tear up the bed when I was staying at his house for a few weeks, and he prescribed a sleep testing session at a nearby hospital. I decided to do it, just to see if I really had something. I was still in denial at this point.

The sleep clinic was pretty interesting. We were told to bring pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, and something boring to read. The nurse who connected me to the sleep apnea machine took about 45 minutes to connect electrodes to my ankles, thighs, chest, arms, and hands. She also attached electrodes to various locations around my head. She clipped an oxygen detector on my finger and fitted my head with some sort of gadget that can detect air flow. By the time I was fully hooked up, I looked like I was going into cryosleep for the long journey to Galaxy Omega. I felt like some sort of telephone cable junction box, with about 93 cables coming off my body. Next, they test to make sure that everything is working properly. Of course, some electrode on my chest was not registering Of course, it was attached to the hairiest part of my chest. Every time she ripped off the electrode to put on more electro-conductive glop, it pulled enough hair with it to knit a long scarf. So, after they laid me down, on my back, told me not to move, and attached a facemask with a pneumatic tube extending out of it, she wished me good night.

It wasn't easy to sleep this way. I'm guessing I did sleep. Next thing I know, it's 1 am and the nurse comes into the room. "You've got it bad," she tells me. "Bad" apparently means that I've had 90 sleep apnea episodes in an hour. That's bad. It's so bad that they don't have to wait for a doctor to diagnose it. My sleep apnea was as plain as the mask on my face. So, the next thing they did was get a CPAP machine and start trying to figure out what pressure to set it at. I'll discuss CPAP machines in a second.

I did learn some important stuff that night. I learned I had sleep apnea, and I had a pretty severe case of it. Throughout the night, the nurse showed up to adjust the CPAP machine. CPAP is an acronym for: Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. The machine itself is a retangular box about 8 in wide, 4 inches high, and about 11 inches deep. I've never seen the inside of it, but it must have some way to control the pressure in the exit tube. The 1 inch-diameter tube extends from the CPAP box and terminates in a face mask. This mask fits over my nose with an airtight fit. There are straps that go behind my head to hold the mask against my face. The machine pumps a positive pressure into the facemask, hardly more than a tenth of a pound per square inch, depending on what the doctor orders, but, it's enough to somehow push the parts of my sinuses or whatever so they don't block my breathing, which is the cause of sleep apnea.

I'm not a vain person. I don't look in the mirror and admire my reflection for hours. But, I've never looked at myself in the mirror when wearing that dopey face mask with the tube dangling out of it. I guess I look like some hose beast from dimension 92 or something. It's such an embarrassment for me that I wait until the lights are off in the bedroom before donning that mask.

And, the CPAP machine makes noise. It makes the loudest noise when I don't have the face mask on and there's no back pressure. Then it roars away. When I have the mask on, it is very quiet when I'm not breathing. However, most of the time I breathe, which the idea of the gadget in the first place. When I put the mask on, I feel the pressure build up around my nose. The machine gets quiet, however, when I breathe, the CPAP machine begins to roar. It stops when I exhale. This is no fun for me.

However, I've started learning how to make all sorts of different noises. I find, when I relax my sinuses, the pressurized air flows into my nose and out my mouth. By doing this, you can make any number of very unnatural-sounding noises, like when you talk after inhaling helium from a balloon. Other noises you can make: If you press your lips together at the right pressure, they will flap like a race horse's, except you can flap for hours, if that's what turns you on. You can direct the air flow over your vocal chords and make those low, droning sounds like those Tibetan monks. On my to-do list is to take the mask underwater, like in the bath tub. I think I need to do a run with no bubble bath and a run with bubble bath. The addition of suds will probably have a major effect on the resulting sounds and visuals.

I use that CPAP machine every night. I definitely have more dreams. My brother, the doctor, said that I should be feeling more awake during the day. For somebody like me, however, having more energy might be detrimental to the health of those around me. I still have restless leg syndrome, but, as long as I take a hot bath before retiring, it's OK.

So, now my nighttime is under control. If only they'd make a machine for my daytime antics.....

Adam, Eve, and Genetically Modified Organisms

A while back, I was walking through the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I was attracted to a Renaissance painting by some grand master. I don't remember the title of the painting, nor do I recall the artist's name, I'm so bad with those details. As I walked closer to the painting and the group of onlookers standing nearby, I saw a scene of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Except for some gravity-defying loose-leaf system, they were stark naked, and, in Eve's hand was The Apple. Adam's hand was outreached to receive it, presumably to a big bite and get thrust out of Eden and do nothing for the rest of Eternity except view Baywatch reruns.

The Apple was dead center of the painting and, of course, my eye was drawn right to it. "Ugh!" I said, "who would eat such an apple?" It was the most mis-shapen, gnarly, mealy-looking apple I've ever seen. It was unappetizing, unappealing, and hardly worth a Garden of Eden Eviction Notice from the Landlord.

A woman standing in the group near the painting responded to my outcry of revulsion to the Apple. It's true, I did say my comment out loud for all to hear, that's how I felt. The woman told me that, since this is the forbidden fruit, the artist painted it to look pretty forbidding, as it indeed was. OK, that seemed logical, forbidden fruit should look forbidding. Makes sense....sort of.

However, something about her comment didn't make sense to me. I began thinking about life in the 14th century, or at least how I thought life might be. I thought about apples, for example. How would an apple in Renaissance times appear? Well, I'm guessing that sciences like horticulture were not advanced compared to today's standards. The concept of determining traits in plants and mating them to achieve plants with superior traits was first suggested by Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th century. So, I think it's a fair guess that much of the food people ate was what we would call "wild." Fruits, for example, came from trees whose genetic material was determined randomly by pollen-carrying bees and such. So, it's possible that apples in the time this painting was created didn't look so great.

Fast forward to the present. A walk in the grocery store produce aisle is like walking through a still-life painting of perfect fruits and vegetables. But, consider, in Renaissance times, there was no such perfection. What happened? What did we to to our fruits and vegetables that made them so perfect and beautiful? We would never accept the apple in that painting. Any self-respecting fruit grower would leave it on the ground to be next year's fertilizer.

Our understanding of Nature now helps us to eat better than royalty did in the 14th century. As our understanding of genetics, horticulture, plant nutrition, and plant pests increased, so did the quality of our food. Horticulturists have been mating plants with desirable characteristics to create perfect peas, spectacular citrus, delicious corn, potatoes to die for, and squash about which to write home.

You see, by purposefully mating plants with positive traits to get an optimum organism, we are manipulating their genetic material. Using the mating process, we are controlling their genetic codes, their DNA, to give us what we want. And, once we've created this perfect produce, we grow it all over the place. And, while we are growing our perfect produce, other, less-desirable varieties, are not being grown, and are becoming extinct. This is not only the case for plants, but for domestic animals. Cattle, for example, are bred to produce high levels of tender meat. Breeding programs can produce cattle that are so heavy, they cannot stand, their legs won't support their weight.

So, when we hear about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), it's not a stretch to see that we have been genetically modifying plants and animals for centuries. We have accepted organisms that are products of breeding programs and believed them to beneficial because of their higher yields, resistance to pests, and better taste.

It's interesting to me when we apply today's standards and morals to times of the past. I often hear people wishing for simpler times, when life was slower and therefore better. If you could put them in a time machine back to the 14th century, for instance, I doubt they would find much very desirable. The available food would be pretty bad, diseases rampant, dirty water, sewerage all over (no plumbing, you know), and no escape. And, you die early.

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, things are going faster than you ever imagined. These days, we don't have to bother with horticulture, we can go directly into a plant's or animal's DNA and have a good old time. Any biologist will tell you that you can't mate two species, Nature's safety valve kicks in and there is no progeny in such acts. So, if you have a plant that is resistant to, say, the boll weevil, and you have cotton, which isn't, you can't mate those two plants. But, today, we can take the genetic material from the boll weevil resistant plant, and incorporate it into the cotton. Voila, you have boll weevil resistant cotton.

It isn't that easy, but, it's not impossible. A half century ago, it was impossible. Today, there are companies that will take your organism and DNA from another organism and incorporate the DNA into that organism to create a completely new variety of that species. The USDA's Plant Variety Protection Office (PVPO) administers the "Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), by issuing Certificates of Protection. The Act provides legal intellectual property rights protection to breeders of new varieties of plants which are sexually reproduced (by seed) or tuber-propagated" (from http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateC&navID=PlantVarietyProtectionOffice&rightNav1=PlantVarietyProtectionOffice&topNav=&leftNav=ScienceandLaboratories&page=PlantVarietyProtectionOffice&resultType).

Maybe we are living in a modern Eden. We have perfect fruits and vegetables, our food supply is the most varied ever, and it's just down the street at your local FoodWay store.

I'd stay away from the Apples if I were you....

Food and Geometry

A scene in the most recent remake of the movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still stands out in my mind. Keanu Reeves plays Klathu, who is charged with destroying life on the planet, because us humans are destroying it. So, to keep us from destroying earth, Klathu will deploy that famous robot to destroy earth so we don't. This is not making sense.

After Klathu emerges from his ship and some panicky soldier shoots him, resulting in a trip to the hospital, where he recovers despite whatever a doctor does to him, Klathu easily escapes the hospital and finds himself in the Newark, NJ train station. The last time I was in the Newark train station, I also felt a fleeting urge to destroy the earth, just so that station would disappear. However, I didn't have the resources Klathu had, so, the earth survived the day I was in Newark Penn Station. Klathu is hungry, so he zaps a vending machine and coaxes a tuna salad on Wonder Bread sandwich out of it. Kathu opens the cellophane wrapper and pulls out a perfect right triangle of tuna salad sandwich. Wonder Bread is almost a perfect square, and, when you cut it on the diagonal, you get two triangles of sandwich.

Let me describe that triangle of tuna salad sandwich: to you geometry geeks, it's a right triangle, meaning that one of the angles is a right- or 90-degree angle. The other two angles are very sharp and pointy. Keanu (Klathu) put the sharp angle in his mouth, bit it off, and started chewing.

"Man!" I said to myself, "That looks good! I feel like I should find a vending machine in Newark Penn Station that has diagonally-cut, tuna salad on Wonder Bread and take a bite out of it, just like Keanu." Then the sensible voice in my head began to rain on my parade, you know the one, it's annoying and you don't listen to it anyway, said: "Hey, you don't like tuna salad and you wouldn't go near Wonder Bread. So, what's the deal?"

Then it occurred to me: so much of the food we buy, especially the manufactured food, comes in perfect geometric shapes. Cookies are perfectly round or oval, candy bars are some variation of a perfect geometric shape. Even potato chips can come in perfect shapes. I don't know what it is, but, there is something very inviting about eating perfect geometric shapes. I know everytime I see a perfectly-formed Chips Ahoy, a Snickers bar as a perfect rectagular solid, or those Milano Cookies as perfect ovally things, I want one. I want to bite into it. I want to look at that first bite into my perfect snack and, as I'm chewing, I will stare feeling pretty happy with myself that I made my mark, I've staked my claim. Nobody will touch any morsel with my bite mark in it.

What is it about food in perfect geometric shapes that attracts us? Why do we have an almost uncontrollable urge to destroy that symmetry with our teeth? Pringles Potato Chips don't taste very good. They taste like chemicals to me, which is the only way you can drug a potato enough to conform those three-dimensional parabolic shapes. It's possible the only reason anybody eats those chips is because you get to trash something perfect with your teeth.

I think there is something primordial about these urges. They come from our distant past. Consider a dog, which, some believe, occupy a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder than humans. Give them anything with a perfect shape and all they can do is rip it to shreds. Come to think of it, dogs seems to want to trash any shape they can get their teeth around, until they all look the same, all chewed up, soggy, no-shape blob sitting in the backyard someplace.

Do an experiment. Go to the convenience store and buy a few items having perfect geometric shapes. Sit at the dining-room table and open each one of them. Wait 10 minutes. If there is any food left on the table, congrats! You are an evolved person. If there is no food left on the table, immediately evacuate your home and tell Bowser to make room for you in the dog house.

Guys and Beer

One of my main motivations for going to the gym is to watch network TV. I climb onboard that elliptical exercise gadget, positioned between two large-screen TVs, and I pump and get my Network TV fix. I’ll never understand why they put on the Food Channel, with program after program featuring chunky chefs telling you how to get as chunky as they are. For your information, I’m not exactly svelte, and I’m probably as chunky as some of those chefs on The Food Channel. And, the fact is, after absorbing about 3.6 minutes of the Chunky Chef Fat-Off, I lapse into some meditation, which has the effect of closing my eyes and transporting me to another dimension lacking any kind of network TV.

Today, during that 3.6 minutes of attention, I saw something that I can’t stop thinking about. Standing in the kitchen with Zaftig Zoe, or whatever, was her hubby, who was pretty thin. It made me think of Jack Sprat and his wife. Anyway, Hubby looked bored and disinterested, sometimes he even frowned. I definitely got the feeling that he didn’t want to be there. Well, all that changed when Zoe pulls out about 4 bottles of beer and a bottle of apple cider. Hubby’s facial expression went from passive to very interested. He started smiling this odd smile. It wasn’t one of those symmetric smiles, where the sides of the mouth go up and out in equal directions, it was a very lopsided smile. The right side of the smile was more to the right, and the left side of the smile didn’t smile very much. You could see more teeth on the right side of his face than the left.

Zoe asked Hubby to pop open the bottles, and he did so with gravity and reverence. She took out a glass pitcher and asked him to pour the bottles of beer into the pitcher in such a way as to minimize foam formation. Hubby’s face shifted into the Lop-Sided-Smile Totally-Focused mode as he verrrrry carefully poured the beer slowly down the side of the pitcher. You could tell that, to Hubby, at least, this might be the most important thing he does this week.

If there’s one thing that guys know how to do, it’s pour beer with little or no foaming. The reason is very simple, the more foam in the glass, the less beer. And, I think we all know a few guys who value the volume of their beer mugs and understand that foam is wasted space, but, seeing that golden nectar with a minimal head of foam might be a thing of beauty, but it won’t last long.

So, with Hubby a Happy Pappy, the dinner guests sit around the table, nibble at the food, and demolish the beer-apple cider gemisch.

Even though I enjoy the occasional beer, it’s still an occasional beer, maybe once every two months, when I’m not the designated driver. And, I like red wine about as often. But, face it, I just don’t indulge myself like Hubby seems to. There are other things that get me excited, but a frosty cold one just doesn’t do it, and I know this one thing has made me a misfit in some parts of society.

The question I ask is this: What the big deal about beer anyway? I am fortunate to live within walking distance of a grocery store, and there’s a liquor store across the street. Every time I walk to buy groceries, I see people coming out of that liquor store loaded with 6-packs, cases, beer balls, kegs. I see men and women whose physical size is dwarfed by the monster beer box precariously balanced in their arms. Lite Beer seems to be the most popular, but that's another column entirely. Think about it, a case of beer; 24, or more, containers of beer. Friends, who buys 24 anythings these days? Do you see anybody buying 24 tomatoes, or 24 bunches of celery, or 24 cans of Green Giant Niblet Corn? Do you even see anybody buying 24 packs of Twinkies, or 24 Big Macs, or 24 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew? Nobody buys 24 anythings anymore. Except beer.

The beer culture in this country boggles my mind. I’ve heard beer drinkers fantasize about having their home plumbed to deliver beer to any room in the house. They announce that a weekend without drinking themselves silly is a wasted weekend. They count up the beer containers and divide by the number of people to determine how much beer they can get. They know which beers are 2.2%, 2.4%, and 3.2% alcohol. Speaking for myself, if I had such a command of this beer vernacular, I’d be too embarrassed to brag about it.

I still can’t get Zaftig Zoe’s Hubby’s smile out of my mind. I think I’ve seen that smile a million times, but this is the first time I truly noticed it and began to wonder what it meant. Maybe some women have that reaction to bottles of beer as well, but, I’m beginning to think it’s a phenomenon among guys. It’s one of those guy things that make me regret the accident of birth that made me a guy.

So, I think I’ll pass on the beer and apple cider recipe. That bruscetta didn’t look so bad, though.

Cheetos--The Recombinant Snackfood

I have a love-hate relationship with Cheetos. I love them because they are salty, crunchy, greasy, cheesy tasting, and glow-in-the-dark orange. I hate them because, for me, they are a symbol of a decaying society. They are totally synthetic, unnatural, packaged in petroleum-based cellophane, and consumed in large quantities in front of large-screen televisions by large-bellied couch potatoes whilst consuming large quantities of lite beer. And, they turn your fingers orange. If I ever see Cheestos crushed into the plush carpet lying between a large sofa and a large screen television, I may cry.

I haven't eaten Cheetos in a while. Believe me, the temptation to run out, right now, for a 12-oz bag is almost unbearable. About a decade ago, when I was weaker and gave into Cheetos temptation, I would eat them at work. Since I handled a good deal of paper, I developed a novel technique to avoid orange fingerprints on my papers. I brought a pair of tweezers from home. I poured the Cheetos in a paper bowl and ate them, one by one, gripping each odd-shaped morsel with the tweezers, and inserting into my mouth. No muss, no fuss, nirvana at work.

But, even then, I knew the dark secret about Cheetos: It is a totally engineered food.

You see, there are two schools of thought when it comes to food: 1. something I'll call Chef Thought, and 2. Food Science. Chef Thought is how most of us think when preparing food. We believe in getting the freshest ingredients, preferably from a farmer's market, frommagerie, butcher, or fish monger. We may use natural spices, butter, tomato sauces, olive oils, and so on. We will cook our food over an open flame, in an oven, or even on a spit. At the meal, everything smells wonderful. Our forks and knives cut into perfectly-cooked textures. And, the taste is memorable. What could be better?

The Food Scientists may think they have something better. Food Scientists aren't interested in farmers markets or butcher shops. Fresh food, or any kind of food, is off their radar screen.

I wasn't present when the idea of Cheetos was conceived. I'm sure there was a room full of Food Scientists charged with developing the Perfect Snackfood.

"Okay," said the head Food Scientist, Charlie Doolin, the creator of Cheetos and Fritos, "today we will develop the specifications for the Perfect Snack Food. When we create this delight, our company will make millions and we can all retire early. So, what should this snackfood look and taste like?"

Food Scientist 1: "It should be crunchy, people like crunchy."
Food Scientist 2: "It should be greasy, everybody I know loves greasy stuff."
Food Scientist 3: "How about cheesy tasting? Everybody loves cheese."
Food Scientist 4: "It should be fun to eat, maybe it should have a strange shape and be some crazy color."
Food Scientist 5: "Don't forget salty. It's not worth eating with lite beer if it isn't salty."

"Very good," said Charlie, "Let's create a crunchy, greasy, cheesy, salty, fun-to-eat, strangely-shaped, crazy-colored snackfood. Get to work."

Now, Food Scientists don't think like Chefs. So, when they think "crunchy," they don't mean crunchy like celery or pickles or green peppers, they think "really crunchy." If all they could produce is celery crunchy, why would anybody buy Cheetos? They should just buy celery.It's got to be crunchier than celery. How do you make something crunchier than Nature? Easy, you use "crunch enhancers," like maltodextrin, a highly-processed sugar derivative. So, let's throw some of that in our Perfect Snackfood.

How do you make something greasy? Easy, you add grease, or in this case, a mixture of "vegetable oils" and partially-hydrogenated soybean oil. Why do you need all these oils? Because the oil composition works to enhance that greasy "mouthfeel" of Cheetos. Too many healthy polyunsaturated oils are more fluid and detract from the crunch. Adding that partially-hydrogenated soybean oil congeals the grease for just the right mouthfeel. And, when I see "partially-hydrogenated," I read trans-fatty acids. But, hey, this is Food Science!

Cheesy, how do you make something cheesy? Simple, just add cheese, right? Wrong! Cheese just doesn't taste cheesy enough. Any Food Scientist worth his weight in fool's gold knows you have to add flavors to enhance the cheesy flavor. Mother Nature was sleeping on the job when she created cheese, not cheesy enough. So, let's add some dimethyl sufide. You can't believe this stuff, it's really cheesy tasting! And, it's volatile, meaning it evaporates quickly. So, when you open that bag, you get a blast of that yummy dimethyl sulfide. I'm salivating here.

And, while we are at it, let's add some preservatives like disodium phosphate and citric acid. And, if you still don't think there's enough flavor, let's throw in some monosodium glutamate. You know what that is, MSG. That's the stuff Chinese restaurants don't add to their food anymore. They let their suppliers add it.

Our good friends, the Food Scientists, then heat the whole mess under pressure, and extrude it into a blast of hot air, and voila, you have Cheetos! Make room at the table for me!

Let's catch up with those Chefs I mentioned at the beginning. You know, those guys who like farmer's markets? Do you think they have maltodextrin, or dimethyl sulfide, or disodium phosphate in their pantry? I think not. I'll bet they don't even know what dimethyl sulfide is for! Ask them about dimethyl sulfide, they will look at you like you came out of a Cheetos factory!

I still have a love-hate relationship with Cheetos. I know they won't love me back, and, if I eat enough of them, they might hate me back with some cheesy form of cardiovascular disease peculiar to Cheetos eaters. So, I can resist the urge to run out and get a bag. Maybe there's some celery in the refrigerator.