Science Spark : the end of Garlic Breath?

Have you ever hesitated before to eat a garlic containing food? Or have you ever been affraid of your breath after eating it? Well, the work of a team from the Ohio State University might help you ...

They investigate which food, consumed just after the garlic, could reduced the garlic breath. To do so, they measure the concentration of the responsible molecules (allyl methyl disulfide, diallyl disulfide, allyl mercaptan, and allyl methyl sulfide) in the breath of people after garlic consumption associated with some food, or in the headspace of a mix of garlic with those food.

"Successful treatments may be due to enzymatic, polyphenolic, or acid deodorization", like with spinach, green tea, apple or parsley, concludes the team.

Although they are not done with the research, when will an industrial offer a "garlic breath killing pill" ?

Ryan Munch and Sheryl A. Barringer Deodorization of Garlic Breath Volatiles by Food and Food Components Journal of Food Science 79

Article first published online: 4 MAR 2014 | DOI: 10.1111/1750-3841.12394

The ghost food truck

The artists Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster, working in Philadelphia, asked themself the following question : " how will people eat when global warming has changed our environment" ? They answered it via the Ghost food truck (http://steamworkphilly.com/ghostfood.html)... In this one of his kind food truck, they offered vegan substitute for potentially endangered foods: chocolate, cod, and peanut butter. As those substitute had neither taste or smell, participants received in addition a plastic headset delivering aroma to the nose...

Science Spark : Odour while waiting to be seated in restaurant will influence your choice

Imagine that you are queuing at a buffet style restaurant for a dessert. After standing for some minutes in the queue,
you finally reach the dessert part, and have too chosse between fruit or chocolate brownie. What will you choose? And why?

This is more or less the setup that Marie Gaillet-Torrent and her colleagues from the Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation in Dijon tested , adding an extra condition...  One hundred and fifteen participants were invited to test a buffet lunch, where they had to choose between fruit compote and brownie for dessert. But, over those 150 people, 75 were "unobtrusively exposed to a pear odour", ie the piece was filled with pear aroma, but at such a low level that one could not detect it. And, at the end, those exposed to this pear odour more frequently went for the compote...

An application for this, suggested in this study, could be to use "non-attentively perceived odour" to promote healty choices in self restaurant. It would now be interesting to check the sustainibilty of such an effect for returning consumer, or what happends in a traditionnal restaurant setting.


Impact of a non-attentively perceived odour on subsequent food choices, Gaillet-Torrent et al, Appetite, In Press, Uncorrected Proof (at the time of writing).

Science Spark : should we add enzyme to release more aroma in a poor wine?

If you one day try to make wine, you ll take grapes, let them ferment for some weeks, somehow filter and get something to drink. If you follow the molecules present in the grapes, you ll see that some of them will disappear during the fermentation, to give birth to aroma compounds. Those molecules, known as "aroma precursors", need some help to release the aroma: they get it from enzyme, which will cut the molecule in two, one of the moiety being the aroma.

Zhu et al, from Qinhuangdao University in China then got the following idea : what if some aroma precursors did not manage to release their aroma ? They would then be in our glass of wine ? Could we then release them? By adding enzyme?

So, they took Cabernet Sauvignonand and divided it in two. In one, they add β-glycosidase, in the other nothing. Using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, they were able to see the action of the β-glycosidase and the formation of aroma. Even more : they could confirm it by a tasting.

So, should we all have a small bag of β-glycosidase with us to pour it in a wine with a poor nose ? Could we then make it better?

Zhu, F.-M., Du, B. and Li, J. (2014), Aroma enhancement and enzymolysis regulation of grape wine using β-glycosidase. Food Science & Nutrition. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.84