The foodie and nerd in me popped its head out during the 13-hour flight to China with the DiSCOVER clan. Instead of watching a blockbuster movie provided during the in-flight service, I opted to watch a documentary instead. I love documentaries :D. This is one was, naturally, all about food. Haha. It’s a really neat production about how humans have evolved to eat cooked food (we’re the only animals to do so) — it’s because we can then digest them faster. The expert said that if food wasn’t cooked, humans would spend 5 hours each day just on chewing! Lol. He showed the science behind how it worked for a snake eating a rat versus uncooked steak and lizards eating raw versus cooked veggies. Veryyyy neat. It showed a little about how turkey baking is hard! The science behind it shows ‘brine’ makes the meat softer when the salt in the water binds with the molescules to make it more tender. Same thing with frying meat, etc. Another interesting part of the 50-minute documentary was how we rely heavily on our senses of smell, hearing, and sight in the experience of eating. If you tape your nose (which is what the lab rat guy did), you would completely be unable to taste what you’re eating. Hearing plays a part too. You can tell whether a drink being poured is hot or cold. Lastly, there was some other interesting bits about how food science helps to create food taste so good. A guy named Nathan Myhrvold cut open appliances and food to show how food is cooked. Link to be provided later. Perhaps. (Edit: Here it is!)

Anyway, it was a neat documentary. 🙂 also a good way to pass the time on an international flight — sleeping, eating, watching stuff on a tiny screen, and blogging!!!!! Excited to land in China soon. (by the time this is posted, I’d have happily obtained Wifi service and will be in hot, 30-degree, humid Beijing :))

(Edit: Currently on day 7 of the trip and not in Beijing anymore, but in Xi’an! Blog posts to follow if I can somehow continue to access WordPress in China :D)