#nitrates

[jokingluna]

[butcherlarry]

Weekly Fic (and Meat!) Recs 70

Howdy everyone! Prepare yourselves for some fic recs, as well as a little bit of an info dump about meat science, curing edition!

I also got an ask this week for some Damian fics! Below is a link:

Damian Fic Recs The Coming of the Season by SalParadiseLost @salparadiselost - Batfam, wip. An omegaverse AU where the batkids are Bruce's biological children. Teenage mom Bruce my beloved.

Nature and Nurture by lurkinglurkerwholurks @lurkinglurkerwholurks - Batfam, complete. This fic was recommended to me by the anon who wanted some Damian fic recs. Anon, whoever you are, thank you for this fic rec, I thoroughly enjoyed it! Bruce gets hit with a deaged spell and his kids deal with Bruce as he ages up. Many new facts are learned and much feels are had.

You're moving to Metropolis? Is that even a real place? by Vamillepudding @vamillepudding - Batfam, complete. An AU where Bruce saves Jason before he dies in the warehouse and decides to leave Gotham and move to Metropolis. Tim has Opinions™ about this (so does Superman).

Where You Lead, I Will Follow by Batsymomma11 - Superbat, complete. A very pregnant Bruce has a bad time picking out what to wear for a gala. Luckily, his husband Clark is there to help :)

Freedom Of The Press by Ktkat9 @ktkat99 - Superbat, complete. Clark attends a Wayne gala event soon after his relationship with Bruce goes public on accident. Luckily, the bat kids are there to help him out.

IS IT JUST YOU AND ME IN THE WRECKAGE OF THE WORLD? by orpheusaki - Superfam, complete. Clark finds and rescues a young Conner from CADMUS and introduces him to the Justice League. Good dad Clark my b e l o v e d.

The One Where Bruce Is Under The Desk by Yippekia @yippekia - Superbat, complete. Lois barges into Clark's office at an inopportune time. Also, no one can find Bruce, who is supposed to be visiting the Daily Planet today :)))))))))))

Prism Fragments by mediant @blorb-el - Clark centric. A series of 100 word drabbles exploring Clark and the spectrum of kryptonite.

Continue on in the post if you are interested in learning about meat curing, otherwise, happy reading!

MEAT CURING 101

Or, everything you didn't want to know about meat curing :)

The first thing you have to know about meat curing is that it was a complete accident. Humans noticed that meat turned a bright pink color after it was smoked or certain ingredients were used in the smoking/drying/cooking process. The reason why it turned pink was because of natural nitrates found in smoke (that's what causes the pink smoke ring in BBQ meat), as well as sea salt and saltpeter. The awesome part about all of this, was that this accidental curing acted as an ancient antimicrobial that protected against C. botulinum (link to USDA FSIS food safety fact sheet), that nasty spore former that causes improperly canned foods to blow up like a balloon (also, if you find a can in your pantry that has blown up like a balloon, dO NOT CONSUME IT).

Why do humans continue to consume this cured meat. Well, it tastes pretty damn good. Go to any fast food restaurant and chances are there is a burger menu item with bacon. Or a breakfast item with ham. It just tastes GOOD. It also has that pretty pink color that stays with the meat after you cook it compared to the brown color you get when you cook uncured items. Moving away from the food quality aspects, it also helps extend shelf life of a meat product AND you have the food safety part I mentioned above. Not only does it protect against C. botulinum, but C. perfingens and L. monocytongenes as well.

How does this magical substance work??? Well, it's not magic, it's science! The protein responsible for meat color is called myoglobin.

In the middle of myoglobin, is an iron atom. What the redox state of the atom and what attaches to it affects the shape of the myoglobin, and this alters the color you see when you look at meat. So when it's just myoglobin hanging out by itself, a water molecule is attached to it and it appears purple. When oxygen attaches to the iron atom, it appears red. When the iron atom goes from a ferrous to a ferric state (basically, what happens when metal rusts), the meat appears brown. You can actually see this when you are out grocery shopping! If you see a piece of meat in a vacuum sealed bag, it appears purple. If the meat is in an over wrap tray, or in a display in a butcher counter, it looks red. When you see meat that has the discount sticker on it, it's starting to turn brown and needs to be consumed or frozen soon (That's why it was discounted. The meat is still safe to consume as long as you cook it properly and eaten that or the next day).

When you add nitrite to the mix, that's how you get the pink color change! The ancient curing methods used nitrate, but that needs to be reduced down to nitrite by a fermentation or a cure accelerator. Modern curing just uses nitrite, most commonly sodium nitrite. The sodium nitrite gets reduced to nitric oxide (this can be accelerated by adding ascorbate or erythorbate) and that binds with the meat to make nitrosomyoglobin. As the meat cooks, this creates nitrosohemochrome, which gives you the pink color!

In the US, most meat products are allowed 150ppm (parts per million, or 0.015%) according to the meat block weight. For bacon, it's a little lower at 120ppm (0.012%). Cure is very regulated in the US as well, because too much can harm humans. I remember when I was working as a quality assurance tech at a ready-to-eat (RTE) facility, I would have to weigh all the cure that production would use for the day. The weights and lot numbers of the cure would be recorded and tracked to make sure that the correct amount was used every day/night (depending on the shift). The storage was regulated as well. It could not be store above any other ingredient (so it wouldn't cause contamination if a bag opened), and it was locked up as well.

Like I mentioned earlier, modern curing used sodium nitrite (you might also see it called Sure Cure). It's normally white, but is dyed pink so it's not confused with other ingredients, like salt or sugar. Sure cure contains 6.25% nitrite, with the rest being salt. There are "natural" ingredients that can be used to cure meat, with the most common being celery powder. Cherry powder is also used as "natural" replacement for ascorbate, the accelerator mentioned above. Next time in the grocery store, check out the naturally cured bacon or ham. If the meat is pink, but the package says it is uncured, look on the back at the ingredient statement. Most likely, that product is using celery powder as its source of nitrite. The package might also say something about "no nitrites/nitrates added!". There will most likely be an asterisk next to that statement. Follow that asterisk to the bottom of the package to its partner asterisk. The statement there will probably says something along the lines to "except for nitrites/nitrates naturally found in celery powder and sea salt."

Welp, that is a very brief info dump about meat curing and why it's used in the meat industry. If you have any questions about it, let me know! I would be happy to answer them :)

[lichen-thr0pe]

[rjzimmerman]

A long-term study of constructed wetlands in Illinois shows promise in reducing agricultural runoff that can damage wildlife habitat and impact drinking water quality.

Excerpt from this story from The Nature Conservancy:

Constructed wetlands are a cost-efficient, long-term, highly effective tool to reduce nutrients exiting fields that could otherwise affect local waterways. A relatively small wetland, around 6% of the tile-drained agricultural area, can reduce nitrogen by nearly 50%. If applied at scale, this approach could help address excess nutrients from farms throughout the Midwest. These types of wetlands are one of many "edge of field" and in-field practices that farms can deploy to support conservation.

"The wetlands do work really well,” says Maria Lemke, TNC’s director of conservation science for Illinois and the lead scientist on the study. “They’re effective over the long term and relatively low maintenance.” Her team found that installing wetlands on the borders of fields reduced both nitrate nitrogen and dissolved phosphorus runoff, significantly improving water quality flowing into downstream stream and river systems.

[lindahall]

Fritz Haber – Scientist of the Day

Fritz Haber, a German Jewish chemist, was born Dec. 9, 1868.

read more...

[neurosciencenews]

Beef Jerky and Other Processed Meats Associated with Manic Episodes

People hospitalized for an episode of mania had more than three times the odds of having ever eaten nitrate-cured meats than people without a history of a serious psychiatric disorder.

The research is in Molecular Psychiatry. (full access paywall)

[mindblowingscience]

One-step catalyst turns nitrates into water and air

Wong said his team will work with industrial partners and other researchers to turn the process into a commercially viable water-treatment system.

Engineers at Rice University's Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Center have found a catalyst that cleans toxic nitrates from drinking water by converting them into air and water.

The research is available online in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis.

Continue Reading.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

One-step catalyst turns nitrates into water and air

Engineers at Rice University's Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Center have found a catalyst that cleans toxic nitrates from drinking water by converting them into air and water.

The research is available online in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis.

"Nitrates come mainly from agricultural runoff, which affects farming communities all over the world," said Rice chemical engineer Michael Wong, the lead scientist on the study. "Nitrates are both an environmental problem and health problem because they're toxic. There are ion-exchange filters that can remove them from water, but these need to be flushed every few months to reuse them, and when that happens, the flushed water just returns a concentrated dose of nitrates right back into the water supply."

Wong's lab specializes in developing nanoparticle-based catalysts, submicroscopic bits of metal that speed up chemical reactions. In 2013, his group showed that tiny gold spheres dotted with specks of palladium could break apart nitrites, the more toxic chemical cousins of nitrates.

Read more.