Food-y longreads, from the military origins of Cheetos to the corrosive history of aluminum cans

PLUS: The secret history of frozen food, the demise of the banana, and Cheetos' connection to the US military. [View this email in your browser](#SPCLICKTOVIEW) [logo]( [[WIRED Magazine]11.25.17]( Holiday weekends: A time for family togetherness—and familial one-upmanship. We reached into the WIRED archive to pull book excerpts that will help you be the smartypants of any food-related conversation. When your nephew starts scarfing down Cheetos, tell him the delicious powder clinging to his fingers is the result of the US military’s search for a way to [dehydrate cheese for troops]( during World War II. ("A 1943 war bond ad unveiled the product to the public with a picture of a bare‑chested soldier feeding a second soldier bundled up in a parka with a cheese cake on a pointy stick.") When your sister cracks open a beer, tell her about the microns-thick epoxy coating keeping the [aluminum can]( from corroding into a sticky rust bucket in her hand. Somebody ask you to get something from the fridge? Hey, FYI, early fridges were cooled with [toxic gas]( that occasionally escaped and killed whole families. You'll be a hit. Or at least you'll be well-informed. Monocultures Humans Made the Banana Perfect—But Soon, It'll Be Gone By Rob Dunn The risk to our crops comes in direct proportion to the ways in which we have simplified agriculture. Nearly every crop in the world has undergone a very similar history—domesticated in one region, then moved to another region, where it could escape its pests and pathogens. But these pests and pathogens, in our global world of airplane flights and boat trips, are catching up. Once they do catch up, there are only very few ways to save our crops, and all of them depend on biodiversity, whether in the wild or among traditional crop varieties. This was true with the banana. [Frozen peas] Staying Cool Brrrr. The Secret History of Frozen Food By Michael Ruhlman With freezing, he paid particular attention to the size of the ice crystals relative to the way the fish or meat was frozen. He recognized that when the crystals were large, a result of slow freezing, they damaged the cell structure, the meat leaked juices, and its texture became mealy. He experimented with freezing vegetables and caribou meat, simply as a matter of ensuring he had enough to eat. We need better hobbies Einstein’s Little-Known Passion Project? A Refrigerator By Sam Kean By the 1920s gas-compression refrigerators had replaced iceboxes all across Europe and North America. There was only one problem. All three gases commonly used as coolants then—ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide—were toxic and occasionally killed whole families. (Methyl chloride sometimes exploded, too, just for fun.) Hence Einstein’s vow to find “a better way.” He knew the weak point in home refrigerators was the compressor, whose seals often cracked under pressure. So he and Szilard designed a fridge without a compressor, a so-called absorption fridge. [GettyImages-146774092] Tasty How the US Military Helped Invent Cheetos By Anastacia Marx de Salcedo Until then, it had been “considered impossible to dehydrate natural, fat‑containing cheese,” because the heat melted the fat, which then separated out. Sanders’s innovation was to divide the process into two steps. In the first, the cheese, shredded or grated, was dried at a low temperature; this hardened the surface proteins of the particles, forming a protective barrier around the lipids. Once sufficient water had been evaporated, the cheese was ground and dehydrated at a higher temperature. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [Ad Choices]( [WIRED Magazine Subscription] Get Wired Don't Let the Future Leave You Behind. Get 6 Months of WIRED Magazine for Just $5. SUBSCRIBE NOW Hold my beer The Secret Life of the Aluminum Can, a Feat of Engineering By Jonathan Waldman Empirically, Ball has figured out how to determine the corrosivity of potential products. Corrosion-wise, sodium benzoate is bad. Copper is bad. Sugar is good. It absorbs carbon dioxide, decreasing the pressure within a can, and it also inhibits other corrosion reactions, because sugar tends to deposit onto pores in the coating. Thus, Diet Coke underperforms regular Coke on at least two counts. Citric acid and phosphoric acid are equally bad. Red #40 is pretty bad, and high chlorides are really bad, and together, they’re really, really bad. (Ball has developed a carefully-guarded formula quantifying all of this corrosion badness, but it was not displayed on any graph at Can School.) Put down that fork How Congress Ignored Science and Fueled Antibiotic Resistance By Maryn McKenna Even though the feed contained just tiny doses of antibiotics, those doses selected resistant bacteria—which not only flourished in the animals’ systems but left the animals, moved through the farm’s environment, and entered the systems of other animals and of humans in close proximity. But the Downings had not gotten sick. There are many strains of E. coli, and the one that resided in the chickens’ guts and crossed to their owners was not a disease-causing one. On the scientists’ side, this did not diminish the risk; it only made the bacterial traffic more complicated. But it would allow those who chose not to believe in the threat to downplay the danger. A jolt to the system Inside Blue Bottle Coffee’s Sprint to Get Off the Ground By Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz “I have to admit something,” Braden announced. Everyone turned. “I’m into coffee, okay? I have a scale at home and everything.” Electronic scales are the hallmark of a true coffee freak. Owning a scale meant Braden weighed the water and coffee beans so that he could experiment and adjust ratios as he brewed. We’re talking science here. Coffee scales are accurate to a fraction of a gram. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [AdChoices]( [WIRED Magazine]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Pinterest]( [Youtube]( [Instagram]( This email was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e–mail address, newsletters@wired.com, to your address book. View our [Privacy Policy]( [Unsubscribe](#SPCUSTOMOPTOUT) Copyright © Condé Nast 2017. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10038. All rights reserved. This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( WIRED · 520 3rd St, Third Floor · San Francisco, CA 94107 · USA