Hate droopy carrots? Here ’s how to keep them crisp

Few culinary experiences are as disappointing as a mushy, floppy bite when you’re expecting a crisp crunch. That’s especially a problem with carrots, which curl and sag after days in the fridge. To find out why they do this, scientists chopped carrots lengthwise to expose their insides, which helped them collect data on how the inner core of the carrot would be affected by refrigeration. The cold environment of a fridge keeps food fresh, but the air convection dries it out. As the carrots lost their moisture, their cells lost their shape, causing the veggies to droop. Carrots lose up to 22% of their water weight in the fridge, the researchers found, causing them to lose their snap and shrinking them by an average of 0.37% per day. A 3D-modeling program used for mechanical and civil engineering accurately predicted how the carrots would droop over time , the team reports today in Royal Society Open Science . Another factor plays a role as well. After carrots are cut, they tend to bend along the axis that they were sliced—a mechanical property known as “residual stress.” The modeling also revealed a way to keep carrots crisp: Keep them cold, moist, and in airtight containers. That means not throwing them straight into the produce drawer, and instead storing them in a misted, sealed bag. The approach could be used for timber, bamboo, and other organic things that suffer residual stress, helping engineers design safer structu...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research