Readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the scourge of palm oil, which we looked at in a previous installment. Palm oil is a creamy, high-smoke-point fat that can be found in a staggering number of prepared foods, cosmetics, and industrial products. Its value has led to the deforestation of large swathes of Malaysia and Indonesia in favour of tracts oil palm trees, destroying the natural habitat of critically endangered orangutans. In addition, child labour is often used in the farming and harvesting of this oil.

As dirty as the palm oil industry is, we’ve all seen how hard it is to uncouple capitalism from cheap ways of doing things. That’s why this recent news from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and Malaysia’s University of Malay is so exciting: They’re investigating harvesting oil from a common micro-algae to replace – and health-wise, even surpass – palm oil. The fascinating process has been detailed in a recent Journal of Applied Phycology

“For the study, the researchers added pyruvic acid – which is an organic acid present in all living cells – to a solution consisting of the micro-algae and a liquid growth medium. The mixture was then exposed to ultraviolet light, to stimulate photosynthesis. After 14 days, the algae was removed, washed, dried and then treated with methanol. The latter treatment was required in order to break the bonds between the algae proteins and the oils produced by those proteins during the photosynthesis process.

The harvested oil is said to possess qualities similar to those of palm oil, although it contains significantly fewer saturated fatty acids, offset by a larger percentage of heart-healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids. In the present version of the technology, 160 grams of algae would be required to produce enough oil to manufacture a 100-gram chocolate bar.”

To boost the sustainability factor, the team notes they are able to derive the pyruvic acid which kick-starts the procedure from food waste, like fruit peels and soybean pulp. They also envision large scale production that uses sunlight as the required UV light source – one step away from literal farming itself!

This innovation is so low cost, I really hope it catches on. Palm oil is one of those things that we can afford to have “go extinct” – I’d rather have my cake and orangutans too.

It seems the banning of American-made sprinkles in the UK might hurt the folks at Get Baked (of the famous sprinkle-bereft raspberry glazed doughnut cookie more than we originally thought*: Taste has made a solid case that sprinkles are having quite a cultural moment. In an age when everything needs to be meme-able, a sowing of impressive sprinkles can make a home-baked cake shine more than tricky-to-master piped frosting. But where did this very 21st-century trend in very tiny confections come from?

[…Many] forms of sprinkles were available throughout 19th-century America, as they were in Europe and elsewhere. Some versions may have been inspired bymukhwas, a South Asian sweet snack of candy-coated fennel, anise, and other seeds (only these served a nutritional purpose, to aid digestion and freshen breath after a meal). For instance, the Dutch brand De Ruijter sells candied anise seeds under the trademarked name “muisjes” (meaning “mice”), among other varieties of little candy toppings, including hagelslag (meaning “hailstorm”).

There’s a Dutch tradition of new parents offering pink-and-white or blue-and-white muisjes on biscuits to friends and family to celebrate a birth, says Dutch food writer Dorothy Porker. As for the long, skinny, sprinkle-esque hagelslag – and often chocolate hagelslag, which, unlike in the United States, must contain at least 32 percent cocoa – there is no need for a special celebration. It’s a common feature of breakfast and lunch, where it’s sprinkled on bread; a canister of the stuff is often set on tables next to salt and pepper.”

From early beginnings to the Great NYC Cupcake Wave at the dawn of the century, sprinkles have been the little candies that could. I wonder if Instagram and TikTok will further serve sprinkles’ proliferation – or if we’ll be seeing a bust anytime soon?

* But don’t worry: All is not lost for the folks at Get Baked! In researching this post, I checked in with their – delightfully profane – social media. Head baker Rich Myers has parlayed the lemons West Yorkshire Trading Standards gave him into lemonade flavoured sprinkles, by founding his own %$#! sprinkle company. Dubbed Expen$ive Sprinkles (I bet in an even combo of rage and marketing genius), the company only debuted last month. The sprinkles look stunning, with rich colours and a satisfyingly round heft. I hope they’ll be able to ship to Canada at some point – I’d love to do a taste test opposite the dreaded banned sprinkles here across the pond!

The science of animal product alternatives has been making crazy strides in recent years. I remember a time when going veg meant sentencing yourself to a life of endless tofu and bulgur salads. But today’s offerings, like 3D printed vegan “meat” and alt-milks galore, are getting increasingly tough to tell apart from the real thing – even for curious carnivores.

A U.K. company called Better Dairy is now taking that mimicry to the next level: Instead of just approximating taste and mouthfeel, they say their proposed yeast-based cheese alternative is “molecularly identical” to actual dairy cheese. The crew’s main motivation is to reduce the heavy burden that dairy farming has on our natural environment. Though still in the R&D phase, the company has seen a recent influx of funding, to get them closer to replicating complex hard cheeses. But how does this delicious science work?

“Although plant-based alternatives are gaining popularity, [Better Dairy CEO Jevan] Nagarajah argues that they are not a complete solution, often lacking in flavour, texture and nutritional profile. And while they might be able to capture market share, he doesn’t believe plant-based alternatives to dairy will be successful in ‘radically’ disrupting the existing $700 billion dairy industry and supply chain. That’s where Better Dairy comes in.

‘We are instead using yeast fermentation and biology to produce products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy,’ he explains. ‘We follow a process very similar to beer brewing but the end result in our case is large vats of dairy instead of beer. This production process, while seemingly futuristic, is actually already being used to produce several enzymes for food production, for example rennet, as well as to produce numerous medical products such as insulin, so we are just building on this.’”

The fact this cheese would have the same look, flavour, nutrition, and lactose levels as cow milk cheese, just… minus the cow, is simultaneously heartening and mind-blowing. I consider a product like this as similar to, say, plant-based meat alternatives being rolled out at fast food places: That is, not something established veg folks might be interested in, but there to convert people who like the meat to a more sustainable diet. The technology already seems like Star Trek to me; I wonder what the next 10 years will look like for the industry – and our plates!

Like anyone who has ordered takeout sushi or Chinese food even once in their lives, I have a kitchen drawer full of the disposable chopsticks that always come with. Besides using one in a pinch as a shim or plant stake, I’ve never seriously thought about their reuse value. And, since they’re usually manufactured out of highly sustainable bamboo, I don’t have that pang of regret when I throw them out after polishing off that leftover cashew chicken. But it seems I’ve been sleeping on an untapped resource! In a recent profile, the always-satisfying Gastro Obscura introduced me to decor and furniture startup ChopValue. The Vancouver-based company transforms 350,000 used bamboo chopsticks from local restaurants each week and processes them into sleek items like shelves, cutting boards, and even office desks.

I admit my first question was about how they clean them; I definitely don’t want soy sauce residue lacing my breadboard. Author Diana Hubbell figuratively breaks it down (as ChopValue does literally):

“To remove any trace of food waste, the chopsticks are first coated in a water-based resin, then sterilized at 200 degrees Fahrenheit in a specialized oven for five hours. A hydraulic machine then breaks the wood down into a composite board, which is sanded, polished, and lacquered as necessary. ‘This material is then the core piece for everything from desks and table tops to home decor,’ [founder Felix] Böck says.”

Böck estimates that, since ChopValue’s inception in 2016, the company has prevented over 50 million pairs of chopsticks from ending up in landfills. In addition to those hefty moral points, they score design points as well: Their items look stylish and solid, with a gentle visual echo of their humble origins in the finish. I’m really impressed by this example of the circular economy in action. Now, let’s see if we can get on top of takeout-containers-as-purses, and plastic-forks-as-keychains, ASAP!

From the space opera that was Heinz’s extraterrestrial ketchup, we turn to more earthbound matters and consider the condiment giant’s marketing magic. While considerably less sci-fi, this story is no less fun, as a recent deep dive into the history, mystery, and numerology of the brand’s fabled “57 varieties” shows!

That pleasingly odd number is supposedly the count of the different types of pickles, relishes, ketchups, etc. Heinz offers. It must have some basis in fact, right? Otherwise, why would such a big company be so willing to keep it central to their identity since the slogan’s invention in 1896? CNN Business sleuth Nathaniel Meyersohn uncovers Heinz’s open secret: That founder H.J. Heinz made it all up.

Theories abound as to why the Pittsburgh ketchup magnate did this: He’d seen an ad for 21 different kinds of shoes that made the brand stick in his mind; his lucky number was five and his wife’s, seven; seven had an “alluring” and “mystical” significance, as he wrote in his autobiography. What started as a savvy instinct quickly became part of the zeitgeist. And Heinz bought into their own myth.

“When Joe DiMaggio’s record hit streak ended at 56 games in 1941, the Yankees star reportedly told a teammate that he missed out on $10,000 promised to him by Heinz if he matched its label. […]

Then there’s the Heinz 57 sauce for steak, chicken and pork, which was memorialized by Jimmy Buffet’s ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’: ‘I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes.’

Noel Geoffrey, who led the Heinz ketchup division from 2008 to 2011, said 57 was ‘like a good luck charm; at the company. The telephone number for the main switchboard at its previous headquarters – the Heinz 57 Center – was, of course, 57. In 2001, the company paid the Pittsburgh Steelers $57 million over 20 years for naming rights to the stadium.”

Like Baskin-Robbins’ “31 flavours” and Kellogg’s “2 scoops” of Raisin Bran, Heinz invented their own mythology, and it’s worked for them. And works still: Even though they have a rotating roster of products that emphatically don’t number 57, the slogan is still prominent on their labels. I don’t think DFC will start numbering our sauces, but Heinz’s history has opened my eyes to what a little dollop of imagination can do for a brand!

As night falls on DFC HQ, we can sometimes hear the calls of the variety of owls that have made their home in the woods around us. And who can blame them! They’re probably celebrating the piles of prey available to hunt, munch on, and then finally barf up the undigestible bits. You haven’t lived until you’ve gone on a field trip, and poked apart owl pellets to guess what unfortunate rodent met their maker on the wrong end of a dinner party. So memorable are owl pellets that they remain the only reliable fact I can (metaphorically) regurgitate about these birds!

Cue my reading of this news, along with a light smack of my forehead and an “Of course!”: Researchers have found that the pterosaur species Kunpengopterus sinensis  – winged dinosaurs that soared through the Jurassic skies over now-China – gulped down their prey, then, like their owl cousins, deftly upchucked the hard bits and went on with their prehistoric day. Now, scientists can study the contents of the pterosaur pellets, and get a fascinating peek into the long-dead creatures’ diets.

“[The study] reveals that members of this species, at least, were fish eaters. (Other possibly tree-climbing members of the genus Kunpengopterus may have dined on insects.) The find also suggests that, like modern birds, these pterosaurs had two-part stomachs: an acid-secreting part to dissolve the food, and a muscular gizzard to compact the indigestible bits into a pellet.

Based on the size of the scales in the larger pellet, found next to the adult, the fish it was eating was much larger than most fish fossils found at the site, the researchers note. That suggests that rather than opportunistically scavenging any fish that washed up onshore, K. sinensis may have been a hunter, actively choosing the largest prey it could catch.”

Current research puts forth that theropods (hollow-boned, three-toed, earthbound dinosaurs) are the true ancestors of birds; that is, they didn’t evolve from pterosaurs. So my delight is even greater, now that I’ve discovered that pellet-ralphing, like flight, evolved separately in two different species, millions of years apart! Next time I hear those owls in the woods, I’m going to head out there and yell that fun fact at them. Give them something else to chew on… besides their unfortunate dinner.

At DFC we pride ourselves on the quality of our sauces and mustards, using the tastiest ingredients to bring a time-tested family recipe – and a couple of twists! – to your table. We’ve learned a lot about the industry since pivoting from I.T., especially how to have more fun at work.

We’ve also learned that lots of creative folks are joining in on the fun in our rapidly growing condiment community. The days of dousing your hot dog with one kind of yellow mustard and one kind of ketchup seem to be well behind us! Just last week, our local paper, the Kingston Whig Standard, ran a state-of-the-industry profile of several seasoning superstars. The common thread between all of them? They wanted to be the spread they wanted to see in the world.

Auria Abraham, the founder of Auria’s Malaysian Kitchen, realizes the power of her condiments to connect people to a sense of home. ‘Sometimes as women, we see cooking as what we do for our family, what we do at home, but I started to see there was a value in it,’ says Abraham, who adds that not all sambal is the same; each household and street vendor in Malaysia has a different recipe. […]

‘Once you start using chili peppers in your life, you don’t go back. And while it’s not the case for everyone, it can be a gradual path that leads you to hotter peppers,’ says Julien Fréchette, founder of La Pimenterie, a hot sauce brand based in Montreal.

La Pimenterie’s flavours include a Bourbon barrel-aged hot sauce, cranberry hot sauce, and a hot sauce that includes a combination of citrus, mango and ants. Fréchette says ants have a citrusy flavour that complement salads, fish and chicken.”

I got a lot of inspiration from reading about fellow creators in our (by 2025) $181 billion USD industry – I want to try all of Kozlik’s Mustard’s more than 36 varieties! I also felt satisfied confirmation that we’re doing things right by sticking with recipes that come from the heart. Authenticity matters in most things, but especially in those you eat. I believe your tastebuds never lie to us – don’t we then owe it to them not to lie to them?

We in the save-the-sea-turtles 21st century may think that reusable straws are a recent invention. But, if a team from the Russian Academy of Sciences are right in their hypothesis, a set of 5,000-year-old gold and silver tubes might just be humanity’s oldest discovered drinking straws.

In 1897, eight thin tubes, each over a metre long and with perforations on one end, were unearthed in an ancient burial mound in the Caucasus region of now-Russia. Laid out among the luxurious funerary goods next to the remains of a (clearly important in life) adult, the tubes were first thought to be sceptres or possibly supports for a textile canopy. But now, Viktor Trifonov, Denis Petrov, and Larisa Savelieva believe the tubes – some with decorative attachments shaped like bulls – were ancient party supplies. That’s because they were likely used to sharing a giant tureen of beer!

“The researchers say their theory is backed by evidence including depictions on seals from Iran and Iraq dating to the fifth to fourth millennium BC of people using straws to drink, while in the third millennium BC ‘banquet scenes showing groups of people sipping beer through long tubes from a shared vessel became popular in Mesopotamian art’.  […]

The tubes’ perforated tip is consistent with detachable metal straw tip-strainers used on the ends of reed straws in the Levant and Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC.

‘The set of eight drinking tubes in the Maykop tomb may therefore represent the feasting equipment for eight individuals, who could have sat to drink beer from the single, large jar found in the tomb,’ the authors wrote.”

Apparently, ancient beer was especially, um, chunky, and the perforations at the bottom of the straws would have been used to filter out sediment. It seems the ancient mountain-dwellers enjoyed a smoother imbibing experience than I would have expected. And also much fancier – though we’re rolling in silicone and stainless steel reusable straws, none of them hold a candle to actual gold and silver! I wish we still had a similar reverence for the joys of sharing a drink with (up to seven) others. Maybe once this pandemic is over, we can all start a giant-beer-sharing trend. Bring your own straw – and plan to be buried with it!

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot about our everyday lives for the worse. But what about those things that have, strangely and counterintuitively, improved over the course of the past (nearly) two years? It’s worth looking at the hows and whys of such improvement, and not for the silver lining value. (Believe me, I’m no fan of bucking up for the sake of it, or what’s now being labelled toxic positivity If things are bad, I’m better off dealing with it directly…) We can learn about supply chains and other circumstances that can inform our return to “normal”… Whenever that might be.

Take, for example, the turn of events currently stumping the FDA and USDA. These American food safety agencies have logged a downturn in food recalls over 2020 and 2021. The FDA issued 427 recalls in 2021 and 495 in 2020, down from 526 and 585 in the previous two years. The USDA’s recalls numbered 128 in 2020 and 126 in 2021, way down from 2018’s 585 and 2019’s 526. And both organizations are trying to brainstorm why.

“Recalls occur for a variety of reasons, including the discovery of foodborne pathogens as well as mislabeling that fails to alert consumers to the presence of possible allergens, such as nuts.

But in the opening days of the pandemic, the nation’s early detection system was knocked partially offline. Many meat processors, for example, closed down after scores of workers tested positive for the coronavirus, which could have created fewer opportunities for recalls at the USDA if food production was on hold.

[Professor of agriculture Ben] Chapman noted that many of the FDA recalls that did occur were because of allergens, a spike that may be attributed to behavior changes caused by the pandemic.

For example, he said, restaurants that were closed may have no longer needed a 30-pound box of chicken breasts, so producers instead turned that into smaller packages to sell directly to consumers in grocery stores.

‘That change of scrambling for more labels to print, scrambling to think about different packaging, could lead to confusion within the supply chain,’ he said.”

I’m glad this recall dip has gone against the phenomenon of more occurrences simply because more folks are there to observe them – like the uptick in weird pet behaviours, or reports of hauntings. No matter what the reason turns out to be, I’m all for results that mean fewer people got sick or had allergic reactions. (Man, add that to the list of things adding insult to pandemic injury!) It will be interesting to see if the FDA and USDA report a similar dip for 2022 – and if they can unravel the mystery to keep it going in the non-pandemic future.

We at DFC HQ are looking forward to New Year’s Eve – spent in the cozy comfort of home yet again, trying to stay out of the way of the latest COVID wave. If we can’t put a positive spin on that apocalypse, we can certainly raise a midnight glass to another one:  A beverage that turns the fallout of climate change into the flavour.

Napa vintner Nicolas Quille is no stranger to “smoke taint:” a fault in wines pressed from grapes grown too close to wildfires. California has had a rough couple of years in that regard, and after Quille tried, and failed, to save his 2020 vintage by harvesting his merlot and malbec grapes early, he didn’t want to just pour his spoiled wine down the drain. So he partnered with local distillery Hangar 1, and they turned the sooty-flavoured liquid into something eminently more drinkable: vodka.

“‘The texture is very nice. It’s smooth. You get almost like the taste of a barbecue from far away, you know someone’s using coals,’ said Michael Kudra, principal bartender at Quince in San Francisco [… ]

Quille said they took a financial hit with the lost product but concedes having the vodka option could be a way to salvage smoke-tainted grapes during fire seasons to come.

Scientists have said the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires are largely attributable to prolonged drought and increasing bouts of excessive heat from climate change.

‘If things turn for the worse and those fires become more violent and more frequent, it’s definitely an option that needs to be on the table,’ [Quille] said.

This beverage seems a bizarro version of Torched Earth Ale, the repulsive tasting beer of our climate-challenged future. But I can see how vodka, with its intensive distilling process, can tame the nasty flavours of out-of-control wildfires. And I suppose “acceptance” follows naturally after the “denial” and “bargaining” steps of grief. In this miserable future (2023??), we’ll at least have a little something to take the edge off.