Food

Cool Finds

Here’s How Cinnamon is Harvested in Indonesia

Watch as the inner bark from cinnamon trees is cut and stripped down to create the spice

April 22, 2015

Cool Finds

Meet the First Donut That Went to Space

A pair of Swedish brothers launched a tasty pastry into the stratosphere—and filmed the entire ride

April 17, 2015

New Research

Forget Fake Meat…How About Fake Milk?

Move over, soy—a group of bio-hackers is trying to turn snippets of DNA into milk-producing yeast

April 15, 2015

Trending Today

How Much Water Does it Take to Grow America’s Favorite Foods?

From beef to beer, here’s how the numbers stack up

April 10, 2015

New Research

Here’s Why You Wince at Wasabi

The structure will help researchers understand pain— and create drugs that could suppress it.

April 8, 2015

Cool Finds

Test Tube Burgers Get a $324,989 Price Cut

The scientists behind lab-grown meat think they can soon offer it at a price most of us can actually afford

April 3, 2015

Cool Finds

Here’s What the Apostles Ate at the Last Supper

Beans, charoset, and unleavened bread

April 2, 2015

Farmers Can Shell Coffee in a Fraction of the Time With This Bike-Powered Machine

A team at an MIT International Development Design Summit is making coffee production a little easier for small-scale farmers in Tanzania

March 31, 2015

Trending Today

The Navajo Nation Will Have the First Junk Food Tax in the U.S.

The Navajo National Council approved a 2 percent increase in sales tax on foods like pastries, fried foods, desserts, chips and soda

March 26, 2015

Ask Smithsonian: Why Do We Love Junk Food So Much?

The jury is still out, but some are suggesting that sodas, chips and fries trick the brain into thinking no calories were consumed

March 26, 2015

Cool Finds

That Time an Astronaut Smuggled a Corned Beef Sandwich To Space

The sandwich was a joke but its crumbs proved to be too much — for politicians, not for the mission

March 25, 2015

New Research

People Ate Pork in the Middle East Until 1,000 B.C.—What Changed?

A new study investigates the historical factors leading up to the emergence of pork prohibition

March 18, 2015

The World of Chocolate

A Special Facility in England Keeps the World’s Chocolate Safe

The cocoa tree is very sensitive to disease and pests, so someone checks every plant bound for international trade

March 16, 2015

Cool Finds

Will 2015 Be the Best Mushroom Year Ever?

Canada braces itself for the biggest morel mushroom harvest in world history

March 16, 2015

Anthropocene

Humans Relied on Rainforest Riches 12,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

Fossil remains suggest that prehistoric people in Sri Lanka may have eaten monkeys and other forest species

March 12, 2015

The Amazing Results of Putting a Light Inside Fruits and Vegetables

Romanian photographer Radu Zaciu makes these farmers’ market foods glow from within

March 11, 2015

Are We Re-Entering a Golden Age of American Bartending?

At the turn of the century, America was a hotbed of cocktail innovation—then Prohibition happened. Now, bartenders are trying to reclaim the golden age.

March 10, 2015

This Week in Crowdfunding

An Augmented Reality Children’s Book, Bacon Jerky and Other Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded

Never worry about halitosis again with the Breathometer Mint bad breath tracker

March 6, 2015

A Norwegian Company is Transforming Deserts Into Farmland

Solar power plants in Qatar and Jordan, not far from the sea, are powering desalination systems that irrigate plants in and around greenhouses

March 6, 2015

This Week in Crowdfunding

A “Smart” Mattress Cover and Other Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded

Don’t have a green thumb? A sensor for your potted plants alerts you when they need watering

February 27, 2015