A Little Word Told Me

In December 2017, a video went viral on the social media platforms, spreading rumours that there is plastic present in Aashirvaad Atta. As a result of it, a lot of people started experimenting at home by adding water to wheat flour and were convinced that their dough is stretchy because the flour they bought has plastic in it. To   put all the doubts and fears to rest, in March 2018, the manufacturing company of Aashirvaad Atta- ITC - had to release a statement explaining how there’s no plastic in the flour, that it is just elastic protein- known as ‘gluten’. Wheat flour is a mix of a lot of molecules, from complex chains of carbohydrates to vitamins and minerals. But when it comes to bread baking, 'gluten' is the component bakers mostly rely on.  What is gluten? Gluten (a word derived from the Latin word ‘glue’) is the Fevicol of the food world. It is the thing that holds your roti, breakfast cereals, pasta and bio-plastics together. It is not present in flour b...

What makes chocolate so chocolaty? Chocolate. We all love it. Well most of us do. I am sure most of you have a specific brand of chocolate that you like to eat. But have you ever wondered what exactly is responsible for creating that unique sensory experience? Chocolate and cocoa products have a complex flavour. There are more than 600 volatile components in such products. Type and amount of these compounds and the way these compounds are made to react during the manufacturing process specify the flavour of the end products.   Today, I’m writing about the 4 main factors that lead to the development of different chocolaty flavours. 1.    The Birth Place and Genetic Origin of Cocoa - Cocoa is the main ingredient that influences the flavour in the final products. But not all cocoa beans are alike. Their genetics and geographical origin influence the final flavour in cocoa and cocoa products. Since the chemical composition of each variety of cocoa bean varies, eac...

Why is everyone expecting CO 2 to save our planet? CO 2 , a greenhouse gas that was once considered a villain has now become an uprising superhero, a hero on whom all of us are relying upon to save us and our planet.   Innovators and promoters of sustainable development, across the globe, are now trying to capture excess CO 2 and turn it into meat , alcohol, concrete, fuel, plastics and whatnot. It seems nowadays everyone is trying to make everything out of CO 2 .   How are they doing it? A lot of research organizations and companies are building their sustainable production systems around a technology, generally referred as DAC- Direct Air Capture . This relatively new technology can be used to capture CO 2 from atmosphere, diluted gasses and distributed sources of carbon via industrial processes. To keep it short and simple, this carbon capturing system consists of 3 main elements- contacting area, solvent or sorbent and regeneration module. The contacting area fa...

To make food production more sustainable, a circular project development company, Orbital Farms, is working to create a system by integrating biotech, energy and aquaponics. This is how they do it. As the coronavirus has enveloped the entire global population in its chaos and our whole nation has gone into lockdown, I, like many of my friends, have turned to the internet to engage my mind by reading all sorts of innovation stories published on various outlets. And this is how I came across this Forbes article . Published in March 2020, this article talked about how different food and biotech companies, across the globe, are working to develop climate independent, farm-free food systems that are sustainable and relatively environment- friendly. In it, they mentioned about a circular project development company - Orbital Farms - and how is it working to integrate different technologies. With the integration of Agritech, Biotech and other technologies, they'll be able to...