What is baking soda? Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which is a salt. Baking soda has a myriad of uses, but it was first used for baking, hence its name. It was discovered in 1801 in Berlin, by a pharmacist called Valentin Rose the Younger. I don’t know when it was first used in baking, […]
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Why does champagne have bubbles but wine doesn’t? Champagne goes through a second fermentation that wine doesn’t. Champagne has bubbles because of the way it is made. Regular wine would have bubbles if it was made in the same way, as can be seen by looking at sparkling wine. The only difference between champagne and
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Is cocaine natural? The main ingredient in cocaine comes from a natural plant, but it needs to be processed. Cocaine is a stimulant taken from the leaves of the coca plant. The Coca plant grows in South America, on the lower slopes of the Andes. Because it is such a valuable crop, cultivation has spread
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Why are prunes a laxative? They contain a lot of two different types of fiber, sorbitol, and polyphenols. What is a prune? Prunes are dried plums, although not all plums can become prunes. Plums also have laxative properties, but they are not as effective as prunes. In America, in 2001, some prune producing companies petitioned
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Why are blueberries blue and strawberries red? Because of the animals the plants want to eat their fruit. Flowers and fruit tend to be a certain color because they have either evolved to attract a certain kind of animal or to repel a certain kind of animal. A lot of flowers and animals as well
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Why are truffles so expensive? They are very rare and very difficult to grow. What is a truffle? The truffle is the fruit part of a fungi, and it is similar to the top part of a mushroom. A truffle is a type of fungus that grows around the roots of some trees. They are
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Norman Ernest Borlaug was known as the father of the Green Revolution because of the new strain of wheat he developed and the millions, possibly billions, of people he saved from starvation. He is said to have saved more lives than any person who has ever lived. There have been numerous agricultural revolutions over human
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Is palm oil bad? It depends. It is bad in terms of health and environmental costs, but it is good because it has more oil than other crops and provides an income for people who would otherwise be living in poverty. What is palm oil? It is made from the fruit of the African oil
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What is tea? It is a drink made from pouring hot water over tea leaves, which come from the camellia sinensis shrub. There are many different kinds of tea available today, but most of them are not technically “tea”. It is a commonly held belief that a “tea” is a drink made from pouring hot
Why is artificial sugar sweet? Because they have molecules that fit into the sweetness receptors in our taste buds. We have about 8000 taste buds on our tongues, although we cannot see them. The tongue is covered in tiny lumps called papillae. The taste buds are inside these papillae. Taste buds are made up of
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