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Hey, why do I have an empty pan? Who took my chicken?

The origin story has been well documented actually: https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

Some exotic fish and frog species are completely transparent. So one might wonder what makes meat opaque. Then wonder how to get the opaque out of other meat. I don't know where doritos comes in.

You can get a used vibratome for <$100 on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/shop/vibratome?_nkw=vibratome

These cuts can get quite small.

I'll give you a another: diaphanous.

I think that E102, E104, E110, E122, E124, and E129 are in fact banned in Europe. I even bothered to remember the numbers, so I'd know what to avoid locally. Here in Israel we use the same names for these food colourings as in Europe, but they are allowed.

Notably, only one local chain sources M&Ms from Europe, so we buy from them. All other stores source M&Ms from the US and have these colours. You can see the difference in the candies.

author here - this is a great idea thanks

Naturalism as an argument is a fallacy. Do you hunt down and beat wild pigs alive with your bare hands before carving them out? Oh, no? Well it seems like you're not "natural" enough. Do you drink milk from the udders of animals? Or do you treat it processes to clean it of pathogens, such as sterilization?

Is the Rhode Island Red chicken which constitutes most of the worlds breeds, that has been bred for 100 years to exclusively stand in a single spot, peck and eat as much as possible and show as little interest in its surroundings to be easier to handle, natural?

Is the tomato, banana or potato you buy at the farmers market, to which Bayer owns the genetical rights, that is 10x the size of the "natural" version, natural?

If you think a little bit about the origins of most sources of nourishment we have day-to-day you can find yourself in a very difficult space to draw naturalist lines

There's tens of thousands of different "chemicals" in the chicken breasts that we have no idea how it works. Not only that, they're living things, cells, that replicate, can become cancerous, and are known to contain human pathogens (Salmonella, bird flu).

In fact, Salmonella kills 420 people per year in the US alone and infects 1.35 million people [1]. That is a whole lot scarier than tartrazine. Of course, it's 100% natural and organic!

[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/inspection-programs/ins...

author here - i have no view on the toxicity of tartrazine other than its declared food safe.

its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!

Probably turned you transparent?

Chester could Oops! All Coating for you

Does this colouring apply to and persist in live tissue?

Imagine the damage you could've wrought to your friends' xbox/playstation controllers.

NilePurple

NileBlue

I wonder if this could be applied to living tissue.

That's not a joke. Not only a cool party trick, but could help in diagnosing some medical conditions.

Gemini, links to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10759... that says that bacteria split the tartrazine in your guts, so I guess no.

Also as the main article explain, to get the effect the concentration must be quite high, like a 5% solution for 12 hours. That's like 50x the concentration of tartrazine in fake orange juice, that is probably dangerous to drink or take a bath.

I tried to take a look. They have to match a refraction index of lipids of 1.43-1.53. A sugar solution from 0% to 80% has an index of 1.33 to 1.44 so it's too low. And 80% solution of sugar is a lot, they are using a 5% solution of tartrazine (that is also a lot, but a smaller lot).

The article was both fun and honest.

I’ve got those same calipers (they look like the generic calipers from outstanding companies on Amazon such as CEDEXS) that I found along side the road on a run. I would venture to say they’d survive a good dousing in alcohol, but not an autoclave. They’re worth about what I’d paid for them, but yeah, I’d hate to ruin even found tools with salmonella vectors.