4 ms·
The Quest to Make a True Blue M&M
- dalke 10y agoIn a related but tangential story about the difficulty of getting a blue color, the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to "Ivette Bassa, constructor of colourful colloids, for her role in the crowning achievement of 20th century chemistry, the synthesis of bright blue Jell-O." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#1992 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners...
- johnchristopher 10y ago> “Unfortunately, you can’t just grind up a peacock feather,” said Robbins, a petite woman with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and the empathic, wide-set blue eyes of a small-town bartender, with what sounded like genuine regret. Sigh...
- foo111 10y agoThe author is a woman. We've had this discussion before. With all the talk about machine learning here on HN, I'm surprised nobody has come up yet with an ML-powered (opt-in) filter to hide these comments away. 'Tis truly the scourge of the Internet these days.
- kpil 10y agoThe author is a bad writer.
- johnchristopher 10y agoThe author being a woman is the least of my concern. That sentence is just really, really bad and riding on some weird picturing (eh).
- kpil 10y agoThat sentence's ending crashed my reading process - after thinking about the correlations related to small towns, bartenders and googly eyed girls for a while I had to reset and restart...
- delinka 10y ago"Scientists estimate that more than half the human brain is involved in processing what we see. Only about 1 percent or so is dedicated to taste. [...] If researchers want you to really taste something, feel its texture against your tongue and smell its subtle notes, they will make you eat it in the dark or under lights that mask colors. Humans are color-seeking animals, and food companies learned to manipulate that trait early." This is why Heinz's attempts at green ketchup years ago failed to impress. My kids thought it was an awesome idea. And we all agreed it tasted exactly how ketchup should. But that bright green on your food where you expected a rich red ... it was unsettling.
- tim333 10y agoI'm reminded of brown M&Ms. There's a surprisingly rich M&M literature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334
- Symbiote 10y agoI'm surprised this is difficult, since Nestle Smarties have used natural colours in Europe since about 2005, and a blue one based on Spirulina was introduced in 2008. Is there much difference between Smarties and M&Ms? They're both chocolate covered with a sugar shell. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/11/fooddrinks https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/11/fooddrinks Pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties
- kepano 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised if creating a deep blue shade is far more difficult than a light blue like the Smarties color.
- gus_massa 10y agoThe research part is interesting, but the idea that natural colorants are magically safer than artificial colorants is stupid. There are many natural substances that have colors and are poisonous. I can agree that the natural red colorant from beet is safe because it's very common to eat a lot of beet without problems. But a weird blue colorant from a bacteria that lives in Yellowstone deserve the same level of test that an artificial colorant, being natural doesn't make it magically safer.
- kpil 10y agoIt seems to me that there is a higher risk that a large complex molecule synthesised by a microbe is biologically active, and that the risk for contamination is higher. Anyway, I could probably live a full life without blue smarties actually.