Making chicken transparent using Dorito dust (chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com)

231 pointsby crescit_eundo9 hours ago62 comments

waltbosz 8 hours ago

I'm trying to imagine the origin story for this science, and I feel like the most fun one is that somebody wanted to make Doritos flavored chicken and accidentally discovered that the marinade turned the chicken breast transparent.

MitPitt 8 hours ago

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.

gus_massa 7 hours ago

They use tartrazine that is a common dye for food, not crushed Doritos. They need a lot of dye to change the internal refraction index and make the meat transparent. So they choose it. From the research article https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11931656/

> It is a hygroscopic compound with a high solubility in water and minimal reactivity. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that this molecule exhibits no adverse effects or systemic toxicity at doses up to 2 g per kilogram of body weight (14). As a result, it is widely used as an artificial food dye in products such as flavored chips (for example, Doritos).

adrian_b 6 hours ago

Vertebrate blood is one thing that is opaque due to hemoglobin, and it cannot be made transparent. The same is true for the pigmented retina of the eyes. So transparent frogs and fishes still have opaque eyes and blood vessels.

Where pigments like the heme of the blood or the melanin of the skin or the visual pigments of the retina are absent, the opacity is due only to the variable refractive index, which causes light scattering, and in this case the tissue can be made transparent with methods like that described in the article which make the refractive index uniform (i.e. exactly like snow that transitions from opaque to transparent when melting).

jimmydddd 5 hours ago

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

Hugsbox 4 hours ago

I'm not proud of how much of a chuckle this gave me

h2_d2 3 hours ago

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

masfuerte 6 hours ago

Author notes the difficulty of cutting thin slices of raw chicken. If you lightly freeze it (or freeze it and let it nearly defrost) it's much easier.

Balgair 2 hours ago

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

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

These cuts can get quite small.

iandanforth 6 hours ago

Translucent is a great word. Let's use it more!

PyWoody 5 hours ago

I'll give you a another: diaphanous.

CamperBob2 4 hours ago

Evanescent, even.

treetalker 4 hours ago

pellucid is a perennial favorite

flir 3 hours ago

You made that one up.

I can see right through you.

pizzafeelsright an hour ago

I don't see why.

layer8 7 hours ago

Fun fact: Doritos don’t contain tartrazine in Europe (including the UK). It’s not banned, but food products containing it must be labelled with “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children” in the EU.

dotancohen 7 hours ago

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.

layer8 7 hours ago

No, E102 (tartrazine) is not banned. It used to be banned in some countries before EU harmonization. But food producers probably avoid it due to the required labeling.

dotancohen 7 hours ago

I see, thanks. Looking at my Anki card, my information was from 2014.

judge2020 6 hours ago

Seems E124 (ponceau 4R) is not banned? This study[0] has "a total of 227 products were labelled with ponceau 4R" although they do estimate daily intake is below safe levels.

0: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2026...

phs318u 35 minutes ago

I understand how the kosher rules around food probably originated - basically avoiding what in those times would have been dangerous options. Do the kosher rules get updated for the modern era with respect to things like additives etc? We’ve learned that many modern additives (can) have negative health impacts. Do things like this get considered?

ricardobeat 8 hours ago

How about a sous vide bath? Could go as long as 72 hours before it turns into complete mush.

casualphysics 7 hours ago

author here - this is a great idea thanks

_Microft 6 hours ago

As the author seems to be around: have you considered surface roughness of the sample as problem to transparency?

Add some water between the grid pattern and the chicken and also some on top of it - or even conduct the experiment under water and the results should be better. You might also freeze the meat before cutting to achieve much smoother surfaces in the first place?

JSR_FDED 7 hours ago

This is a lighthearted topic and a well-written article.

But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.

casualphysics 7 hours ago

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!

JSR_FDED 7 hours ago

It’s a great article and I hope you don’t think I’m trying to assign any kind of agenda to it (on your part or mine). For some reason while reading it, it evoked a sense of queasiness in me - entirely my issue. Perhaps the contrast with the healthy vegetables I’d just eaten and an appreciation for the animal that contributed to my meal put me in an unusual state of mind.

augment_me 6 hours ago

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

fc417fc802 3 hours ago

It's only a fallacy in the same way that the slippery slope is a fallacy, ie when used as a logical basis in and of itself. There's nothing wrong with either one when used appropriately in context.

ryandrake 3 hours ago

I mean, of course, there's a spectrum when it comes to eating food that is "natural". On one extreme side, you have beating wild pigs and drinking from udders. On the other extreme, you have... whatever the fuck is in Doritos and soda pop. Part of figuring out your own dietary practices is finding the right spot along that spectrum, to at least attempt to draw that line yourself.

Yes, a lot of people who simply complain about vague "chemicals" in food are nutters, but I don't think that means that I'd be OK with eating every mass-produced-food-like-product offered for sale.

sam1714 4 hours ago

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...

comrade1234 8 hours ago

I once found a Cheeto-shaped thing in a Cheetos bag that was nothing but Cheeto-coating. It was wonderful. Can't imagine what it did to my insides.

nozzlegear 8 hours ago

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

poly2it 8 hours ago

Does this colouring apply to and persist in live tissue?

swiftcoder 6 hours ago

Persist, no, but its been tested before on live tissue: https://www.nsf.gov/news/window-into-body-invisible-skin

Barbing 8 hours ago

Chester could Oops! All Coating for you

rzzzt 7 hours ago

Probably turned you transparent?

not_a_bot_4sho 6 hours ago

This is how Kevin Bacon prepared for the Hollow Man role

iforgotmypasswo 2 hours ago

Can I eat it? And is it tasty?

I did not see answers to these important questions when reading the article.

mszcz an hour ago

59 comments and nobody has even mentioned "Fringe"?

I mean, I know this is more of a serious forum, but any thread that has "transparent chicken" and "dorito dust" in the title has be a one of them lighter ones...

ziofill 6 hours ago

a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2H31RzTPoU

theapadayo 6 hours ago

This headline could literally be a NileRed video.

basilikum 6 hours ago

NileBlue

royal__ 5 hours ago

NilePurple

dghughes 7 hours ago

What does it do to people? Do I get a transparent anus if I eat a family size bag of Doritos?

gus_massa 7 hours ago

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.

rdmuser 7 hours ago

I wonder what the altered chicken would look like after being cooked vs normal chicken.

dotancohen 7 hours ago

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.

swiftcoder 6 hours ago

That was indeed the initial research target: https://www.nsf.gov/news/window-into-body-invisible-skin

mbStavola 8 hours ago

This is why we must fund the sciences. How else would we get transparent Dorito tendies?

coolThingsFirst 2 hours ago

Too much Math for not much of a result.

deadbabe 5 hours ago

I had this dream once where we invented a type of tattoo that would make your skin transparent so you could see muscle and veins underneath. I think it could still happen.

greyface- 7 hours ago