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Why you like the taste of milk and cookies so darn much

Milk. It’s a crucial part of the eating experience — for baking, cooking, coffee, cereal, smoothies. But it’s best use? For dunking cookies, of course! But why do milk and cookies make the world’s best duo? It’s culinary chemistry, Great Big Story reports. Here’s the actual science behind why the two are so tasty together. A Brief History of Milk 10,000 B.C.: Animals are domesticated and milked. 1862: Louis Pasteur modernizes milk safety. The term “pasteurized” is born. 1884: Milk is bottled and the milkman came to be. 1994: The Got Milk campaign sweeps the nation. What SCIENCE says about dunking “When you dip cookies into milk you change a number of things about those cookies that completely alters your eating experience,” Matt Hartings, professor of chemistry at American University. “Alters” means that not only does the texture and composition change, but the chemical composition does as well. There are specific ways…

The fate of your confiscated airport food

A bustling travel season is in full swing, and while we’re all familiar with the airport security screening process, it can still be easy to make a mistake when an open water bottle or piece of fruit gets forgotten in your backpack. But what happens to these food items after they’re confiscated? These airport checkpoints don’t exist simply to inconvenience you, but rather to protect our American agriculture from threat. In a video by Great Big Story, U.S. customs supervisor Ellie Scaffa tells the story of what happens to these illegal imports down the line — and no, the TSA staff doesn’t get to sit around feasting each evening. “I’ve been threatened with my life,” she says about her efforts at New York’s JFK Airport where she personally sorts through up to 600 pounds of illegal produce per day. All confiscated goods, whether it be Chinese beef candy or Jamaican mangoes,…