Tag Archives: mustard

Hillary’s Right. Tabasco Sauce Is Great.

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton carries around Tabasco in her purse. UPROXX thinks this means she is “trying too hard.” UPROXX is stupid. She has done this for years. She really likes Tabasco. A lot of people don’t and have used this occasion to make jokes about Tabasco. I rise in its defense.

Here’s what you need to understand about Tabasco. It isn’t really a hot sauce. It’s silly to compare it to other hot sauces because it really isn’t that hot, but it is good. It is a vinegar sauce. A delicious vinegar sauce that America loves. It makes almost anything better. What would a Bloody Mary be without Tabasco? What about corned beef hash? Do you like corned beef hash? Of course you do. Everyone likes corned beef hash. But would you like corned beef hash without Tabasco? I am not so sure.

No matter what you call it, it is undeniable that America has chosen Tabasco as its spicy condiment of choice. It is in almost every single restaurant in America. The places that do not have it are flipping the bird to the American people.

Tabasco Tabasco Tabasco. Yum yum yum. Confession: I have been known to take hits of Tabasco straight.

Now let’s go a bit further.

The worst condiment in America is mayonnaise. Mayonnaise offends my senses and makes me want to vomit. However, Americans love mayonnaise. I forgive them for this. America is about choice. Americans should be allowed to have their disgusting mayonnaise. But if we are going to allow people to have mayonnaise when they want, then we need to allow people to have Tabasco without shame.

Here’s the real worst thing about mayonnaise: When you ask a waiter for a BLT with no mayo, they do not respect the no mayo wish. They think in their addled minds, “How could anyone not want mayo?” Well, look, I don’t want mayo. Get away from me.

I would understand people who don’t like Tabasco getting upset if Tabasco were treated with the same assumptions as mayonnaise, but it is not so. Tabasco is never just on something. They give you the bottle and you make your own mind up. You have no reason to be mad about Tabasco. Tabasco isn’t forcing itself on you. Tabasco is just there; if you want to use it, use it.

Your outrage about Tabasco is misplaced. If you want sriracha or Tapatio or whatever, that’s fine! Live and let live, bro. The fact that other people’s enjoyment of Tabasco incenses you so says something about you. Not Tabasco. It is an indictment of your emotional maturity. I don’t know why you can’t let people be happy, but you can’t. Maybe your parents weren’t around. Maybe your dad went to the store to buy some Tabasco and never came back. I don’t care. Take it up with a therapist. Let people who want to indulge in Tabasco without fear of social retribution do so. It is why the pilgrims sailed across a sea.

You know what other condiment is great is mustard. Mustard is great. You know what other condiment is not so great? Ketchup. Ketchup is too sweet! Ketchup is also, like mayonnaise, one of those things that restaurants just assume you want on things. I do not. If I wanted ketchup on something I would ask for it. Be outraged about ketchup and mayonnaise. Not Tabasco.

Tabasco has done nothing to you.

Excerpt from: 

Hillary’s Right. Tabasco Sauce Is Great.

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Scientists Just Came Up With the Craziest Way to Protect Your Kale

Mother Jones

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A version of this story was originally published on Gastropod.

Farmers searching for an eco-friendly way to combat pests in their fields might someday have a surprising new weapon: speakers. It may seem crazy, but scientists hope that sound systems bumping just the right noises can prime plants to pump up the levels of their own, innate chemical protection.

That’s just one of the ways that researchers are eavesdropping on the sounds of the farm in order to improve agriculture, as we report on this episode of Gastropod, a podcast about the science and history of food. From James Bond-inspired spy devices that can capture the wing-beats of hungry insects, to microphone-equipped drones patrolling henhouses in search of sick chickens, we discover that sound has the potential to help reduce pesticide use, make our vegetables even more nutritious, and even improve animal welfare.

Mozart for Plants
The idea that plants can hear and respond to music has a long and checkered history. Charles Darwin made his son, Francis, play the bassoon in front of an herb while he watched to see whether its leaves twitched (the plant was unmoved); Barbra Streisand caused a veritable explosion of color when singing to her tulips in the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; and, as recently as the 1970s, UNC Greensboro physicist Dr. Gaylord Hageseth claimed that his experimental “pink” noise could make turnips sprout much faster.

While the claims that playing Mozart in a cornfield will lead to a dramatic increase in yield have proved impossible to replicate, scientists are sure that plants do respond to sounds in their environment, with small changes in gene expression, for example, or slightly different germination rates. But, as Heidi Appel, senior research scientist at the University of Missouri, told Gastropod, “We never understood why plants would have that ability.”

Pest Sounds
Intrigued, Appel teamed up with her colleague Reginald Cocroft, a behavioral ecologist, to focus on a sound that, they thought, might be particularly useful to plants: the vibrations caused by insect feeding. “These are one of the earliest and most quickly transmitted signals plants have that they’re being attacked,” said Appel. And while plants can’t hear insects the same way we do—they don’t have ears, after all—they can sense vibrations, much like club-goers feel the thump of bass or worshippers hear an organ reverberate through a church. “In that case, your body is a substrate,” picking up the sound vibrations, Appel explained. “That’s much more like what plants experience.”

To test their theory, Appel and Cocroft used lasers to measure the minute leaf tremors, about 1/10,000th of an inch, that caterpillars make when they munch on Arabidopsis (rockcress), a spindly relative of cabbage and broccoli that is commonly used in plant research. Next, they played those sounds back to one set of plants, and left the control group in peace. Finally, they let the caterpillars loose on both plant populations. Astonishingly, they found that the plants that had undergone audio training actually responded to the attack by producing much higher levels of mustard oil, their innate pesticide—which made them much less appetizing to the hungry caterpillars.

“That was very exciting and we were very happy,” Appel said. “But, at one level, we thought, ‘So what?’ Plants might respond to everything.” So they tested the plants again, this time using recordings of wind and treehoppers, a bug that looks like a thorn and sings with a high-pitched whine but does not like to dine on Arabidopsis. In response to these vibrations, however, the plants produced no increase in mustard oil. With this elegant experiment, Appel and Cocroft had solved a basic question of plant evolutionary biology: Plants evolved the ability to respond to sound vibrations in order to recognize and ward off attackers.

Musical Mustard
In doing so, Appel and Cocroft may have also hit upon a potent environmentally-friendly pesticide. Perhaps a field full of speakers blasting the sounds of crunching caterpillars might help terrified crops prime themselves to ward off a real attack, removing the need to apply chemical pesticides. This summer, Appel and Cocroft are testing commercially useful Arabidopsis relatives in the brassica family, such as kale and Brussels sprouts, to see if they demonstrate the same response.

But, as Appel pointed out to Gastropod, the use of sound might have an even more direct impact on our health. While plants evolved these chemical responses to deter pests, for humans, they often provide both flavor and health benefits. In fact, the sulfurous compounds produced by Arabidopsis and its fellow brassicas form the basis of America’s favorite hot dog condiment, mustard. And those same chemicals are actively being studied by cancer researchers for their potent health benefits. Maybe, by playing predator sounds in the field, farmers could actually grow more healthful plants.

Appel is testing this hypothesis with an African plant that is currently harvested for medicinal use, to determine whether caterpillar feeding increases the plants’ production of beneficial chemicals. If so, she can then test whether playing predator sounds has the same effect. “When we look at a plant as a source of flavor or medicine, what we are looking at is the product of millions of years of evolution of the plant interacting with its own pests—and those are largely insects,” said Appel. Insects that, it turns out, plants can hear.

This is the first of a two-part series exploring the relationship between sound and food. Listen to this episode of Gastropod for much more on the experimental history and emerging science of acoustic agriculture, from the perfect bovine playlist to the lost rhythms of Southern farming. And, if you like what you hear, subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on hearing the difference between hot and cold tea, learning how the sound of tiny bubbles in soda changes its taste, and discovering the science behind pairing wine with music.

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Scientists Just Came Up With the Craziest Way to Protect Your Kale

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