Making food safer, in a cool way

These days, buying food can seem a little like a game of Russian Roulette. (First spinach, now peanut butter! What's next?) And the follow-up TV and newspaper articles on the flaws in our food growing, processing and delivery system should make everyone want to have their own gardens.

Well, on the better-news front, the Agricultural Research Service (a part of the USDA) is hard at work trying to find solutions, at least for fresh food. And they're looking into some really cool ideas.

They are making "edible films" from pureed fruits and vegetables and exploring ways to incorporate bacteria-fighting compounds into them. One of the most promising antibacterials comes from an active compound in the herb oregano, called carvacrol, which has been found to have significant antimicrobial powers.

Minute amounts of carvacrol could be added to an edible film made from spinach, let's say. A small square of this film could then be slipped into a package of fresh spinach where it would release protective vapors to protect the spinach against pathogens (possibly including E. coli). The vapors could even find their way into the crinkles and folds of a spinach leaf.

In addition to oregano, researchers have also found the essential oils in the following herbs/spices to be effective against E. coli: (in order of effectiveness, with oregano leading the list): thyme, cinnamon, bay leaf, clove, lemongrass and allspice.

To read more about it, check out the full article on the ARS site.

Fruit tattoos

Starting this winter (2007), you should start to see citrus fruits at your grocery without those annoying little adhesive labels. The Sunkist company will be the first distributor in this country to label their fruits using a new technology called Natural Light Labeling. The technology was introduced over a year ago, but it has taken this long to be certified by the FDA.

I was fascinated by this idea, so I called the guy who developed the technology. His name is Greg Drouillard and he kindly spent a good bit of time with me on the phone explaining how it works. The way a fruit or vegetable gets labeled is with a teeny, short-duration laser pulse. It removes about .005% of the skin's pigment. This does not in any way affect the shelf life of the produce, because the amount of skin removed is on the cellular level. You would need an electron microscope to even see any depression in the skin. In the case of light-skinned produce (like lemons), a very small amount of food-grade pigment is added to make the label legible.

In addition to being of interest to consumers who are tired of scraping off those pesky little labels (or, in my case, forgetting about them and ending up with them in the recipe), it is apparently also of interest to Homeland Security. They're interested because food can easily be tracked and identified because there is no way to alter the label since it's integral to the skin.

According to Drouillard, only nonedible-skin produce has been approved so far, but edible-skin produce should be approved in a couple of months. Rats, I forgot to ask him how they were going to label raspberries…