Butter
From Telkoth.net
I was buttering an english muffin today when my brain decided to get all abstract on me, and I started to become impressed not only at butter's usefulness, but by something else about it: it's not only an amazing seasoning - for example, when added to an english muffin - and an essential ingredient in baking, but it's also wholly unnatural!
I mean, yeah, there are some plant-based butters, but animal butters seem to me by far the most common, at least for home use, and there is no such thing as naturally-occurring milk butter, except maybe by the same kind of freak accident it'd take to create - I dunno - aspartame?
Not that that should ever be used as an argument to defend aspartame. (There are much better arguments for doing that.)
Thinking about this made me look into the legal definition of "natural" foods. Just what is so natural about butter that isn't about, for example, aspartame?
What Does "Natural" Food Mean says:
Legally, food labeled "natural" does not contain any artificial ingredients, coloring ingredients, or chemical preservatives, and, in the case of meat and poultry, is minimally processed.
Not very helpful, as I couldn't find their definition of an artificial ingredient.
What Are Natural Ingredients suggests:
Natural Ingredients include plant, animal, mineral or microbial ingredients...With the following clarification:
- present in or produced by nature.
- produced using minimal physical processing.
- directly extracted using simple methods, simple chemical reactions or resulting from naturally occurring biological processes.
Minimal Processing means the ingredient has had no more processing than something which could be made in a household kitchen, stillroom, on a farm, or vineyard. It doesn't mean they have to actually be made in those settings, but that they would require no more equipment or technology than that which could be employed in those settings. Simple Extraction Methods/Simple Chemical Reactions include cleaning, cold pressing, dehydration, desiccation, drying, evaporation, filtering, grinding, infusing [water or natural alcohol], & steam or water distilling.
This definition strikes me as odd, because it's one whose meaning necessarily changes over time. It certainly allows butter to be natural, but we have many more tools available in the kitchen today - and certainly in the farm today - than we had before. We also have access to more chemicals, and possess a greater understanding of chemistry, than we had before, and cooking is nothing more than food chemistry! These all change the meaning of "minimal".
Is wine natural? I don't know how to make it, and it'd take a bit of training to make well.
This definition also raises questions in my mind such as "is there anything you can make with a microwave that you can't make without one?"
But now I'm curious about how aspartame is made. Fortunately, Aspartame: How Products are Made can tell us:
Aspartame is primarily derived from compounds called amino acids. These are chemicals which are used by plants and animals to create proteins that are essential for life. Of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids, two of them, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, are used in the manufacture of aspartame.
Alright, so aspartame is made from ingredients "present in or produced by nature". But how is it made?
Direct fermentation produces the starting amino acids needed for the manufacture of aspartame. In this process, specific types of bacteria which have the ability to produce certain amino acids are raised in large quantities. Over the course of about three days, the amino acids are harvested and the bacteria are destroyed.
So, like wine, or yogurt, or something. But then what?
A process which involves mixing at room temperature for 24 hours, mixing at 149°F for 24 hours, then cooling to 0°F. Oh, and you need a little palladium and hydrogen and another 12 hours of time.
Alright, so it's a process that takes about three days to make, and requires specific chemicals equipment.
But you know what else needs specific chemicals and equipment?
Pickling. (Or even yeast breads!)
Pickles can take about three weeks, and without the proper equipment or knowledge, will kill you dead. And you know what makes pickles crisp? Lime; not the fruit, the calcium hydroxide. Also used to as an ingredient in whitewash, mortar, and plaster, and to fill the root canal for the first stage of endodontic therapy. (Thanks, wikipedia.)
The only reason it sometimes gets the happy name "pickling lime", instead of always being referred to by its chemical name "calcium hydroxide", is probably because pickling is a common process that's been practiced for years, the tools for which have been made cheaply available for household use. (Also, probably some marketing.)
So how long before I can find "machine-washable aspartaming filters" in cute little boxes right next to the fast-acting dry yeast? (Hopefully made with something a little cheaper than palladium. Alternative energy folk are working on it.)
Aspartame-making might not be house-hold chemistry today, and again, for all I know, aspartame is the most poisonous thing on earth (although from what I've seen, it appears pretty harmless), but I think I am convinced of at least one thing: butter's not natural! (And let's not even talk about yogurt.)
[Gets another buttered english muffin to eat.]
