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Silicone in Cooking Oil!

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Enthalpy:
Since I check the composition of supermarket so-called "food", I get astonished every buying day...

Glycerol is a classical, OK. Plus varied polyols and sugars everywhere: bread, sauces, which are themselves parts of dishes. They keep the food damp.

Varied derivatives of cellulose. I just enjoy feeling them in my paunch, crop and omasum. Moo!

Latest discovery: Polydimethylsiloxane, that is silicone, in cooking coil.

At least this one is stable at heat and in the human body. But... What the hell does it do there? Increase the viscosity?

And why should it not be a non-biodegradable pollutant once excreted?

Enthalpy:
Silicone is said to increase the smoke point of frying oil
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2998319A/en
I didn't see an explanation there.

Next one: ethanol in bread.

Maybe it's not intentional. As bread producers throw saccharose in their thingy (but just WHY?) and yeast belongs to bread, ethanol appears inevitably.

Not so nice to all people who avoid every ethanol purposely. Nor to Muslims.

Since I read food composition, I find nearly no bread limited to flour, water, salt and yeast. Polyols and varied sugars everywhere. At the baker's too, but he has no legal obligation to mention it.

He who wants bread composed of bread shall bake it himself.

Corribus:

--- Quote from: Enthalpy on July 07, 2023, 06:13:07 AM ---Latest discovery: Polydimethylsiloxane, that is silicone, in cooking coil.

At least this one is stable at heat and in the human body. But... What the hell does it do there? Increase the viscosity?

--- End quote ---

Hi Enthalpy,
In the US, dimethylpolysiloxane is permitted to be added to some foods up to 10 ppm as an antifoaming agent. You could see why this is important in cooking oils, to prevent spattering.

Regulations

Corribus:

--- Quote from: Enthalpy on July 31, 2023, 06:16:23 PM ---He who wants bread composed of bread shall bake it himself.

--- End quote ---
If you ever bake your own bread (using, as you indicate, nothing but flour, water, butter/fat, etc.), you will notice the texture changes considerably as the bread ages... and the aging is FAST. 12 hours after cooling the bread gets hard. This is due at least in part to rapid crystallization of starches in the flour (the chemical name is retrogradation, but we usually call it staling). The process involves the action of water molecules. Anyway, the proportion of fat (say) to starch can impact the kinetics of retrogradation, but not enough for the commercial guys, who need their bread to last for several days (or more) and still seem fresh (soft) to the consumer. That's what all those other chemicals are for. For instance, chemical emulsifiers prevent (well, slow) alignment of starch molecules that contribute to crystallization, and certain modified starches and sugars bind water to keep the bread moist (loss of water contributes to crystallization). As example, I have a bag of wheat bread from the grocery store that is about two weeks old, still soft as the day I bought it. You can probably thank the soy lecithin that's listed on the ingredient label for that (lecithin is the same molecule found in eggs that makes them so useful in cooking to stabilize emulsions like mayonnaise).

Enthalpy:
Yes, Corribus...

And I too like now my bread to stay soft for days. When I lived in Paris, I had several bakers in my small street, a banette was often finished before I arrived home, and at least one baker opened on Sunday and an other on Monday - life was easier for that one aspect.

I presently read all compositions and refuse most ones because an illness, supposedly long covid, makes me ultra-sensitive or allergic to many, many compounds, and the uncertain list evolves at each crisis. I have to renounce to most food, including bread, and have started baking by myself just to avoid the compounds noxious to me.

So my present rants are significant for a fraction of the population only, and I hope this fraction won't expand.

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