CENtral Science

Alcohol and Solvency

While the Newscripts gang has been known to indulge in a cocktail or two, we doubt that even our penchant for pricey vodka could rack up a liquor store bill in excess of $400,000. But not John Runowicz, NYU’s former chemistry department budget director. Or at least that’s what NYU thought he was spending at a local liquor store. Over the course of five years Runowicz submitted 13,000 receipts from the same liquor store to petty cash. He had pilfered $409,000 (that’s what I call solvent!) before his repeat receipts were spotted by a curious courier. Today, as the New York Daily News reports, he was sentenced to one to three years in prison.

So, chemistry students, any way your department could credibly spend over $80,000 a year on booze?

Speaking of drinking, we read an interesting article on alcohol proof this week in the Washington Post. Proof, as you may recall, is simply the percent of alcohol times two (math even an organic chemist can do). Since alcohol is such a good solvent for flavor compounds, proof has been on the rise in spirits in recent years so that bartenders can produce potent potables that pop with flavor. Even alcohol levels in wine have been creeping up to deliver a bigger burst of fruit flavor.

Chemist and absinthe enthusiast Ted Breaux even weighs in with an explanation of why the green fairy boasts such a high alcohol content–136 proof. “You have to bottle it at high proof because of the herbs. You want clarity, and if the proof isn’t high enough, the compounds will deteriorate. The spirit becomes hazy with sediment, and it looks awful,” he tells the Post.

Finally, in a tipple trifecta, a former Amgen chemist is distilling his own whiskey in the unlikely state of Utah, reports the Thousand Oaks Acorn. I got a good giggle out of this amended quote from chemist-turned-whiskey-maker David Perkins: “Making whiskey is a lot more fun than (pharmaceutical) drugs, as you get to taste the results as well as the in-between experiments.”

What’s in Your McNugget?

It’s no secret that McDonald’s sells different fast food products in different countries. For example, in Korea, you can get the Bulgogi Burger (pork patty in a bulgogi marinade) and a McBingSoo (Korean shaved ice) to wash it down; in El Salvador, French fries are made out of yuca rather than potatoes; and in Egypt, you can order the McFalafel sandwich and Egyptian cookies.

You may be surprised, however, to find out that even the same product sold in different countries can contain different ingredients. A recent article in CNN.com pointed out that Chicken McNuggets sold in the U.S. contain more calories and saturated fat than McNuggets in Great Britain. What’s more, American McNuggets also contain the preservative tertiary butylhydroquinone (tBHQ) and the anti-foaming agent dimethylpolysiloxane whereas British McNuggests do not.

In the article, Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of “What to eat,” recommended that readers avoid foods containing ingredients they can’t pronounce.

Is this really sound advice?

Veggie Burgers…Made with Organic Chemicals

In one of those odd moments when what chemists define as “organic” clashes with the rest of the world’s definition, I came across a report of a common organic chemical—hexane—in veggie burgers. The Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute just released a report about the use of hexane-extracted soy products in veggie burgers, and several blogs have picked up the story.

I can’t decide which headline about the study is more alarmist: Gothamist’s “Popular Veggie Burgers Contain Poisonous Chemicals” or Mother Jones’ “Which Veggie Burgers Were Made With a Neurotoxin?” The Village Voice’s “Enjoying that Veggie Burger? It May Contain Chemical Residues” just made me chuckle.

Anyhow, the chief complaint by Cornucopia is that the soy in many products has been washed in a hexane bath to extract fats. Hexane, Cornucopia notes, is bad for the environment and bad for you. Unless you’re eating soy products specifically labeled “organic” chances are you are eating hexane-extracted soy. And that goes for other soy-based foods and ingredients, such as soy baby formula and soy lecithin in chocolate.

Cornucopia didn’t actually see if any of those non-organic veggie burgers contained hexanes. They did test hexane-extracted soy oil, soy meal, and soy grits for the chemical and found soy oil contained less than 10 ppm of hexanes, while soy meal and soy grits had 21 pp and 14 ppm of the compound, respectively.

Although I’ve returned to the carnivore fold, I spent more than a dozen years as a vegetarian. I also spent five years as an organic chemistry graduate student, and I’d bet that I probably was exposed to more hexanes by running one column than I was through my cumulative consumption of Boca Burgers. But I am curious, anyone out there willing to test these burgers for hexane content?

UPDATE: Mother Jones has posted an update on their item about neurotoxin-laced veggie burgers in which they interview Charlotte Vallaeys, the author of the Cornucopia Institute’s report. Although Ms. Vallaeys holds an. M.S. in Agriculture, Food and Environment, I wish MJ had spoken to someone with a heftier chemistry background…and someone who wasn’t involved with the study.

When asked about the point that Chemjobber makes, Vallaeys responds: “The evaporation argument is often used by the companies that make these products. But what happens to the food when you cook it with this neurotoxic compound? Does it react with other substances and create new compounds before it evaporates? That really has not been studied.”

Vallaeys argues the bigger picture is that any product made with hexanes contributes to air pollution, but she seems to be a little confused about just what hexane is doing the atmosphere. In the report, she writes, “In the air, hexane reacts with other pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen to form ozone.”