Being mean to Broccoli - Foodskey

Greg Tucker explains his "treat them mean" approach to broccoli in a bid to extend shelf life. This video also features Gilbert Shama from Loughborough University.

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Foodskey films feature experts from the University of Nottingham.
Foodskey films by Brady Haran. Video editing on this film by Stephen Slater.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• broccoli
• UV
• ulra-violet

[Alphasys]

If broccoli changes it's chemical composition when under stress, doesn't this also change its nutritional value? And are these "stress chemicals" safe to eat with this higher concentration? It's great if shelf-life can be prolonged, but I'd not like it that much if the taste changes and chemicals produced by the manor of conservation have carcinogenic properties or other downsides.

[2nd3rd1st]

They try to find a way to waste energy on broccoli in order to compensate for shortcomings in the distributionof the plant?

Why not try to optimise shipping first. If you can distribute broccoli more evenly and more often to shops around the country you would not need to enhance its shelf life. And you wouldn't need to build new machines and save energy that way. Same goes for most foreign food.

Or buy local. People rather buy produce from Spain in the shop than fresh from the farmers market.

[Muscleduck]

@Alphasys Antioxidants are the main reason a glass of red wine a day is healthy.

[Level84]

@sakkarugzo That doesn't make sense lol

[ccronn]

When he says "it got burnt" he laughed....

Maybe a little sadomasochistic to the veggies, eh? lol :)

[Rannyfash]

genetic engineering ftw, replace a couple of genes responsible for decomposition with duds, wallah bobs your uncle

[IqsMontegro]

@IqsMontegro cancer rates. Nature is perfect so let Nature do all the hard work and dont try and manipulate/exploit natures endevours.

[IqsMontegro]

i respect nottingham uni but when you do stuff like this, its beyond reason.

why on earth would you want to stress a vegtable, there are soo many things we do not understand fully like, ghost particles, how everything has an anti particle and things like, so common sense tells me when doing experiments like this to veg which we will digest, there must be some sort of sideffect that you guys overlook, or do not have the ability to see.

and personally i belive its things like this which increase

[TheMojmo]

Broccoli looks like tiny tree.

[TomusMedia]

@2nd3rd1st did you not hear when he said novel?

[SEThatered]

Humans have a gene that is responsible for liking of hating broccoli.

(Of course it aims not at broccoli itself but rather to the chemical that broccoli contains.)

So if you hate the taste of it, chances are you'll never grow to like it.