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The article says "Consumers in China, Sharon points out, are particularly interested in checking food safety, given the history of problems with the food supply
by aaronharnly 10y ago
The article says "Consumers in China, Sharon points out, are particularly interested in checking food safety, given the history of problems with the food supply." Is there any reason to think that the most common problems with food safety would be detectable with this sensor?
I don't doubt it's possible there could be some correlation, but it seems like a big leap from estimating carbohydrate content to detecting food-borne illness or contamination. A quick google turns up this comment[1] (of uncertain reliability!) saying most food safety issues are caused by toxic animals or plants, pathogenic microorganisms, or chemical contamination.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500434/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500434/
- xkcd-sucks 10y agoMost nasty stuff is present in vanishingly small quantities compared to all the other crap in biomaterial, which is why most contaminant testing involves an extraction step, or even extraction+fractionation, before spectrometry. Somewhat relatedly, inorganic ions don't have nir activity, only their complexes with organic counterions have nir activity. And there are like a gazillion different things that complex with lead/mercury/etc. in unpurified biomaterial, so direct nir measurements of a sample are not a productive approach. That being said, it would certainly be a big moneymaker if placebo contaminant detectors became a thing with Chinese consumers like surgical masks for smog