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waltbosz 21 hours ago [-]
I'm trying to imagine the origin story for this science, and I feel like the most fun one is that somebody wanted to make Doritos flavored chicken and accidentally discovered that the marinade turned the chicken breast transparent.
jimmydddd 19 hours ago [-]
Hey, why do I have an empty pan? Who took my chicken?
Hugsbox 18 hours ago [-]
I'm not proud of how much of a chuckle this gave me
Some exotic fish and frog species are completely transparent. So one might wonder what makes meat opaque. Then wonder how to get the opaque out of other meat. I don't know where doritos comes in.
gus_massa 21 hours ago [-]
They use tartrazine that is a common dye for food, not crushed Doritos. They need a lot of dye to change the internal refraction index and make the meat transparent. So they choose it. From the research article https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11931656/
> It is a hygroscopic compound with a high solubility in water and minimal reactivity. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that this molecule exhibits no adverse effects or systemic toxicity at doses up to 2 g per kilogram of body weight (14). As a result, it is widely used as an artificial food dye in products such as flavored chips (for example, Doritos).
adrian_b 20 hours ago [-]
Vertebrate blood is one thing that is opaque due to hemoglobin, and it cannot be made transparent. The same is true for the pigmented retina of the eyes. So transparent frogs and fishes still have opaque eyes and blood vessels.
Where pigments like the heme of the blood or the melanin of the skin or the visual pigments of the retina are absent, the opacity is due only to the variable refractive index, which causes light scattering, and in this case the tissue can be made transparent with methods like that described in the article which make the refractive index uniform (i.e. exactly like snow that transitions from opaque to transparent when melting).
masfuerte 20 hours ago [-]
Author notes the difficulty of cutting thin slices of raw chicken. If you lightly freeze it (or freeze it and let it nearly defrost) it's much easier.
As the author seems to be around: have you considered surface roughness of the sample as problem to transparency?
Add some water between the grid pattern and the chicken and also some on top of it - or even conduct the experiment under water and the results should be better. You might also freeze the meat before cutting to achieve much smoother surfaces in the first place?
ricardobeat 21 hours ago [-]
How about a sous vide bath? Could go as long as 72 hours before it turns into complete mush.
casualphysics 21 hours ago [-]
author here - this is a great idea thanks
teo_zero 4 hours ago [-]
I'm sure this research has some higher motivations behind, but I can't help foreseeing an ignobel coming soon!
layer8 20 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: Doritos don’t contain tartrazine in Europe (including the UK). It’s not banned, but food products containing it must be labelled with “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children” in the EU.
dotancohen 20 hours ago [-]
I think that E102, E104, E110, E122, E124, and E129 are in fact banned in Europe. I even bothered to remember the numbers, so I'd know what to avoid locally. Here in Israel we use the same names for these food colourings as in Europe, but they are allowed.
Notably, only one local chain sources M&Ms from Europe, so we buy from them. All other stores source M&Ms from the US and have these colours. You can see the difference in the candies.
layer8 20 hours ago [-]
No, E102 (tartrazine) is not banned. It used to be banned in some countries before EU harmonization. But food producers probably avoid it due to the required labeling.
dotancohen 20 hours ago [-]
I see, thanks. Looking at my Anki card, my information was from 2014.
judge2020 19 hours ago [-]
Seems E124 (ponceau 4R) is not banned? This study[0] has "a total of 227 products were labelled with ponceau 4R" although they do estimate daily intake is below safe levels.
I understand how the kosher rules around food probably originated - basically avoiding what in those times would have been dangerous options. Do the kosher rules get updated for the modern era with respect to things like additives etc? We’ve learned that many modern additives (can) have negative health impacts. Do things like this get considered?
spolitry 10 hours ago [-]
No because the laws were specific not general. But obviously people can follow the inspiration of avoiding "unclean" food.
iandanforth 20 hours ago [-]
Translucent is a great word. Let's use it more!
8n4vidtmkvmk 7 hours ago [-]
What else do you call something that's neither opaque nor transparent?
PyWoody 19 hours ago [-]
I'll give you a another: diaphanous.
CamperBob2 18 hours ago [-]
Evanescent, even.
treetalker 18 hours ago [-]
pellucid is a perennial favorite
flir 17 hours ago [-]
You made that one up.
I can see right through you.
pizzafeelsright 14 hours ago [-]
I don't see why.
19 hours ago [-]
Eridanus2 7 hours ago [-]
Is it sort of how oil makes paper transparent? Impregnates air gaps to suppress index mismatch scattering? I'm just offering this casually, someone please correct me if I'm off.
balou23 2 hours ago [-]
No, it's by changing the refractive index of the water in the chicken.
If you scroll down a lot, the post goes into details.
I have to admit, it's a bit hard to follow the exact details as a non-physicist on a lazy sunday morning... but you change the refractive index by uhh... something related to the polarization and Maxwell's equations
JSR_FDED 21 hours ago [-]
This is a lighthearted topic and a well-written article.
But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.
sam1714 18 hours ago [-]
There's tens of thousands of different "chemicals" in the chicken breasts that we have no idea how it works. Not only that, they're living things, cells, that replicate, can become cancerous, and are known to contain human pathogens (Salmonella, bird flu).
In fact, Salmonella kills 420 people per year in the US alone and infects 1.35 million people [1]. That is a whole lot scarier than tartrazine. Of course, it's 100% natural and organic!
Naturalism as an argument is a fallacy. Do you hunt down and beat wild pigs alive with your bare hands before carving them out? Oh, no? Well it seems like you're not "natural" enough. Do you drink milk from the udders of animals? Or do you treat it processes to clean it of pathogens, such as sterilization?
Is the Rhode Island Red chicken which constitutes most of the worlds breeds, that has been bred for 100 years to exclusively stand in a single spot, peck and eat as much as possible and show as little interest in its surroundings to be easier to handle, natural?
Is the tomato, banana or potato you buy at the farmers market, to which Bayer owns the genetical rights, that is 10x the size of the "natural" version, natural?
If you think a little bit about the origins of most sources of nourishment we have day-to-day you can find yourself in a very difficult space to draw naturalist lines
fc417fc802 17 hours ago [-]
It's only a fallacy in the same way that the slippery slope is a fallacy, ie when used as a logical basis in and of itself. There's nothing wrong with either one when used appropriately in context.
Bluestein 4 hours ago [-]
> the Rhode Island Red chicken which constitutes most of the worlds breeds, that has been bred for 100 years to exclusively stand in a single spot, peck and eat as much as possible and show as little interest in its surroundings to be easier to handle, natural?
I thought you were describing the typical doom scrolling, Zuckbook dopamine-slave, for a second.-
ryandrake 16 hours ago [-]
I mean, of course, there's a spectrum when it comes to eating food that is "natural". On one extreme side, you have beating wild pigs and drinking from udders. On the other extreme, you have... whatever the fuck is in Doritos and soda pop. Part of figuring out your own dietary practices is finding the right spot along that spectrum, to at least attempt to draw that line yourself.
Yes, a lot of people who simply complain about vague "chemicals" in food are nutters, but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
> On one extreme side, you have beating wild pigs and drinking from udders. On the other extreme, you have... whatever the fuck is in Doritos and soda pop.
Well, this just means we haven't found any plant or animal to produce these things in sufficient quantities for our ancestors to notice and use them throughout the ages.
It doesn't mean it's bad for you, in particular. Treating "natural" vs "artificial" as spectrum, or even categories, is itself borderline nutty.
> but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.
Nobody is forcing you to. However, note that we also don't eat every "natural" thing we can find. Most things growing around the natural environment are hazardous or lethal to humans. So even our selection of what is "natural" food is, itself, highly... artificial.
augment_me 12 hours ago [-]
You're right, this comment is a bit of a projection. I have had friends and my parents friend groups soured because of people who went off the long edge because they could not formulate or explain their reasoning and opinions beyond natural = good, artificial = bad. I have a wish that people will be able to go beyond this.
jiggawatts 6 hours ago [-]
> Do you drink milk from the udders of animals?
Ironically, drinking milk is a "modern" development in the human race, and we're still evolving the ability to digest lactose as adults to compensate for this "unnatural" behaviour!
casualphysics 21 hours ago [-]
author here - i have no view on the toxicity of tartrazine other than its declared food safe.
its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!
JSR_FDED 21 hours ago [-]
It’s a great article and I hope you don’t think I’m trying to assign any kind of agenda to it (on your part or mine). For some reason while reading it, it evoked a sense of queasiness in me - entirely my issue. Perhaps the contrast with the healthy vegetables I’d just eaten and an appreciation for the animal that contributed to my meal put me in an unusual state of mind.
b33l 11 hours ago [-]
I feel queasy thinking about how much invisible meat has presumably been all over the place this whole time.
MadrasTh0rn 7 hours ago [-]
Changing the optical window on biological tissues is useful
dylan604 10 hours ago [-]
> The intensely chemical nature of Doritos
I was on a shoot for a series of videos promoting new flavors of chips. One of the lines stood out to me about "our scientists went to work". Not our chefs went to work. Scientists.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
They're being honest. Cooking is play. It's what you do when you don't care about quality or consistency of the process. The professional version of cooking is called chemical process engineering.
Similarly, a chef who does proper, principled discovery in this space, would be also called a scientist. Conversely, not being principled is basically playing around, or at best, doing art (with no negative implications intended here; art is important and needed).
Dylan16807 6 hours ago [-]
And that was specifically about flavor, not any other attribute? I'd also understand if they were talking about using science to adapt already-existing flavors to the right form.
I can't find the ad to answer that myself.
dylan604 6 hours ago [-]
I took it to mean they came up with chemicals to make the flavor rather than actually using spices and food ingredients but I'm a cynical bastard. I absolutely could have been taking it out of context. I don't even remember what brand, assuming Lays. It wasn't an ad in the :30 or :60 sense. It was promotional video that was shot in VR, so probably not something widely seen.
comrade1234 22 hours ago [-]
I once found a Cheeto-shaped thing in a Cheetos bag that was nothing but Cheeto-coating. It was wonderful. Can't imagine what it did to my insides.
rzzzt 21 hours ago [-]
Probably turned you transparent?
not_a_bot_4sho 19 hours ago [-]
This is how Kevin Bacon prepared for the Hollow Man role
Barbing 22 hours ago [-]
Chester could Oops! All Coating for you
poly2it 22 hours ago [-]
Does this colouring apply to and persist in live tissue?
This is why we must fund the sciences. How else would we get transparent Dorito tendies?
theapadayo 20 hours ago [-]
This headline could literally be a NileRed video.
royal__ 18 hours ago [-]
NilePurple
basilikum 19 hours ago [-]
NileBlue
iforgotmypasswo 16 hours ago [-]
Can I eat it? And is it tasty?
I did not see answers to these important questions when reading the article.
rasengan 20 hours ago [-]
They used to say Yellow 5 was really bad for males... and it used to specifically say "Yellow 5" in the ingredients. First time I heard it called "Tartrazine!"
dghughes 21 hours ago [-]
What does it do to people? Do I get a transparent anus if I eat a family size bag of Doritos?
Also as the main article explain, to get the effect the concentration must be quite high, like a 5% solution for 12 hours. That's like 50x the concentration of tartrazine in fake orange juice, that is probably dangerous to drink or take a bath.
rdmuser 21 hours ago [-]
I wonder what the altered chicken would look like after being cooked vs normal chicken.
dotancohen 20 hours ago [-]
I wonder if this could be applied to living tissue.
That's not a joke. Not only a cool party trick, but could help in diagnosing some medical conditions.
so making a sucrose solution should also have the same effect?
gus_massa 19 hours ago [-]
I tried to take a look. They have to match a refraction index of lipids of 1.43-1.53. A sugar solution from 0% to 80% has an index of 1.33 to 1.44 so it's too low. And 80% solution of sugar is a lot, they are using a 5% solution of tartrazine (that is also a lot, but a smaller lot).
mock-possum 20 hours ago [-]
Making very tiny thin slices of chicken very slightly transparent using *the dye most commonly found in dorito dust
I mean this is fun, but let’s be honest, they didn’t exactly crush up a bunch of Doritos, shake chicken breast in the dust, and create some sort of clear chicken meat
dugidugout 16 hours ago [-]
The article was both fun and honest.
MadrasTh0rn 7 hours ago [-]
Conspiracy people go nuts
laybak 21 hours ago [-]
enjoyed the article. this was both fascinating from a technical perspective, and repulsive from a food perspective
mszcz 15 hours ago [-]
59 comments and nobody has even mentioned "Fringe"?
I mean, I know this is more of a serious forum, but any thread that has "transparent chicken" and "dorito dust" in the title has be a one of them lighter ones...
Dylan16807 6 hours ago [-]
Well you could explain why that would be mentioned.
coolThingsFirst 16 hours ago [-]
Too much Math for not much of a result.
deadbabe 18 hours ago [-]
I had this dream once where we invented a type of tattoo that would make your skin transparent so you could see muscle and veins underneath. I think it could still happen.
serf 18 hours ago [-]
seeing the essentially un-cleanable calipers touching raw chicken irks me to hell, even if it is a cheapy pair.
mikestew 17 hours ago [-]
I’ve got those same calipers (they look like the generic calipers from outstanding companies on Amazon such as CEDEXS) that I found along side the road on a run. I would venture to say they’d survive a good dousing in alcohol, but not an autoclave. They’re worth about what I’d paid for them, but yeah, I’d hate to ruin even found tools with salmonella vectors.
aizk 21 hours ago [-]
As the zoomers say these days "Unstoppable scroll vs unskippable title"
https://imgur.com/gallery/parking-lot-is-full-Hlrdb
> It is a hygroscopic compound with a high solubility in water and minimal reactivity. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that this molecule exhibits no adverse effects or systemic toxicity at doses up to 2 g per kilogram of body weight (14). As a result, it is widely used as an artificial food dye in products such as flavored chips (for example, Doritos).
Where pigments like the heme of the blood or the melanin of the skin or the visual pigments of the retina are absent, the opacity is due only to the variable refractive index, which causes light scattering, and in this case the tissue can be made transparent with methods like that described in the article which make the refractive index uniform (i.e. exactly like snow that transitions from opaque to transparent when melting).
https://www.ebay.com/shop/vibratome?_nkw=vibratome
These cuts can get quite small.
Add some water between the grid pattern and the chicken and also some on top of it - or even conduct the experiment under water and the results should be better. You might also freeze the meat before cutting to achieve much smoother surfaces in the first place?
Notably, only one local chain sources M&Ms from Europe, so we buy from them. All other stores source M&Ms from the US and have these colours. You can see the difference in the candies.
0: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2026...
I can see right through you.
If you scroll down a lot, the post goes into details.
I have to admit, it's a bit hard to follow the exact details as a non-physicist on a lazy sunday morning... but you change the refractive index by uhh... something related to the polarization and Maxwell's equations
But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.
In fact, Salmonella kills 420 people per year in the US alone and infects 1.35 million people [1]. That is a whole lot scarier than tartrazine. Of course, it's 100% natural and organic!
[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/inspection-programs/ins...
Is the Rhode Island Red chicken which constitutes most of the worlds breeds, that has been bred for 100 years to exclusively stand in a single spot, peck and eat as much as possible and show as little interest in its surroundings to be easier to handle, natural?
Is the tomato, banana or potato you buy at the farmers market, to which Bayer owns the genetical rights, that is 10x the size of the "natural" version, natural?
If you think a little bit about the origins of most sources of nourishment we have day-to-day you can find yourself in a very difficult space to draw naturalist lines
I thought you were describing the typical doom scrolling, Zuckbook dopamine-slave, for a second.-
Yes, a lot of people who simply complain about vague "chemicals" in food are nutters, but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.
Well, this just means we haven't found any plant or animal to produce these things in sufficient quantities for our ancestors to notice and use them throughout the ages.
It doesn't mean it's bad for you, in particular. Treating "natural" vs "artificial" as spectrum, or even categories, is itself borderline nutty.
> but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.
Nobody is forcing you to. However, note that we also don't eat every "natural" thing we can find. Most things growing around the natural environment are hazardous or lethal to humans. So even our selection of what is "natural" food is, itself, highly... artificial.
Ironically, drinking milk is a "modern" development in the human race, and we're still evolving the ability to digest lactose as adults to compensate for this "unnatural" behaviour!
its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!
I was on a shoot for a series of videos promoting new flavors of chips. One of the lines stood out to me about "our scientists went to work". Not our chefs went to work. Scientists.
Similarly, a chef who does proper, principled discovery in this space, would be also called a scientist. Conversely, not being principled is basically playing around, or at best, doing art (with no negative implications intended here; art is important and needed).
I can't find the ad to answer that myself.
I made transparent chicken - MrGreenGuy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2H31RzTPoU
I did not see answers to these important questions when reading the article.
Also as the main article explain, to get the effect the concentration must be quite high, like a 5% solution for 12 hours. That's like 50x the concentration of tartrazine in fake orange juice, that is probably dangerous to drink or take a bath.
That's not a joke. Not only a cool party trick, but could help in diagnosing some medical conditions.
I mean this is fun, but let’s be honest, they didn’t exactly crush up a bunch of Doritos, shake chicken breast in the dust, and create some sort of clear chicken meat
I mean, I know this is more of a serious forum, but any thread that has "transparent chicken" and "dorito dust" in the title has be a one of them lighter ones...