Scientists at Stanford University have shown that the yellow-orange food colorant tartrazine—which is usually associated with Doritos chips—can actually make the skin of mice appear translucent.

Publicized in the Science magazine, this discovery sheds light on how to examine organs and tissues without resorting to intrusive surgical procedures.

“We found that an aqueous solution of a common food colour approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, tartrazine, has the effect of reversibly making the skin, muscle, and connective tissues transparent in live rodents,” according to the research.

Zihao Ou oversaw the experiment that entailed drenching live mice with a tartrazine and water mixture. Scientists were able to see through connective tissues, muscles, and skin in a few of minutes. “For those who understand the fundamental physics, it makes sense, but if you aren’t familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick,” Ou added. Ou is now an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Tartrazine and Doritos

Tartrazine may see through skin and reveal structures beneath since it absorbs blue and UV light. Researchers achieved transparency by rubbing the solution on the skulls and abdomens of mice after testing it on tissue samples and raw chicken. Mice remove the dye through their urine, and the dye eventually fades and the transparency goes away.

“This “transparent abdomen” allows for direct visualisation of fluorescent protein–labeled enteric neurones, capturing their movements that mirror the underlying gut motility in live mice,” according to the study.

Noting, “It’s important that the dye is bio-compatible – it’s safe for living organisms,” Ou emphasised the importance of this discovery. Plus, it’s cheap and effective; we won’t even need a small amount for it to do its job.

Although tartrazine has translucence effects in mice, the researchers warn that human skin is too thick for it to work. “Human skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s,” Ou noted, emphasising the need for additional research to fully comprehend its possible uses in humans.

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It’s not $5, but Subway is reintroducing affordable footlongs and entering the fast restaurant value menu war.

Beginning August 26, Subway will sell any footlong sandwich for $6.99, a significant savings given that certain footlongs may cost up to $14 in some cities. It’s the privately held chain’s latest attempt to entice back customers who are avoiding rising fast food pricing and spending less when they do go out.

The offer has a catch: it is only available through the app or website with the code “699FL” and expires on September 8.

Subway Announces A New Price For Footlongs As It Enters The Value Menu Wars

A private equity firm controls subway, and unlike its publicly traded competitors, it rarely discloses sales figures. However, according to trade publication Restaurant Business, its sales and traffic challenges this year are similar to those of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks.

“Today’s diner is more stretched than ever, and too often that means sacrificing quality, variety, or flavour to find an affordable meal,” said Doug Fry, president of Subway North America, in a press statement. “Our menu is full of footlongs for every budget, and this new deal means our guests can get the sandwiches they crave at a great value.”

Subway has also been diversifying its menu as sandwich prices have risen. The business recently began selling $3 Dippers other Sidekick snacks priced between $2 and $5 to attract cash-conscious customers who may be turned off by the higher prices of its other items.

The inclusion of Sidekicks and Dippers “makes sense,” according to David Henkes, senior principal at Technomic, who told CNN that Subway needed to generate income someplace as fast food customers began to push back on price increases due to inflation.

“They’ve underperformed in the sandwich segment, so they need to shake things up a little bit and drive some incremental traffic,” Henkes told investors. According to technological data, Subway falls behind competitors in terms of side and snack sales.

Subway Announces A New Price For Footlongs As It Enters The Value Menu Wars

Subway has recently added customisation to its menu, doubled down on driving orders to its app, expanded its worldwide footprint, and introduced freshly sliced meats, a significant departure from the company’s traditional approach of delivering cold cuts pre-sliced.

Another important challenge for Subway is its declining shop count: the firm closed more than 400 stores in the United States in 2023, the fewest since 2005 (20,133).

SOURCE | CNN

Americans are paying more for oysters happy hours.

According to experts, the buck-an-oyster offer is all but dead, with some eateries raising costs as high as $2.50 per oyster.

Oyster happy hours are just one of the many aspects of American life that have become more expensive as prices have risen in recent years. While the US Federal Reserve has made progress in slowing the rate of price rises, inflation has remained persistently over the target, and Americans have been paying more for everything from groceries to rent to, yes, going to their neighborhood bar for an oyster deal with friends.

Inflation Comes For Your Oysters

Wholesale oyster prices skyrocketed to triple-digit highs in 2022 and only started falling late last year. However, according to the most recent Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute analysis, general inflation pushed retailers to hike store pricing to prevent losing money on surplus oyster stock, even as sales and wholesale expenses fell.

Oysters used to be plentiful and (relatively) inexpensive, which made them ideal for pub fare.

“Historically, Americans would consume a lot of wild oysters, and because they were so abundant, they were at such a low price,” said Julie Qiu, co-founder of the Oyster Master Guild, a New York City-based oyster teaching organization. “People kind of anchored their perception of oysters being a cheap food until all the wild oysters pretty much went away.”

While Wells Fargo reports that wholesale oyster prices have dropped from the previous year’s high of $117 per gallon to $88, long-standing supply concerns compounded by climate change may imply that the prices shown on oyster bar menus will not fall anytime soon.

The largest supply issue driving market changes is a scarcity of wild-caught oysters, which industry experts say has been a concern for over a decade.

“We’ve had a number of both man-made and natural events that have caused problems with oysters,” said David Branch, sector manager at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. He cited the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a series of storms in Louisiana as high-profile disasters that destroyed oyster beds and drove the business to transition from wild-caught to farm-raised oysters.

Branch believes farms now provide up to 60% of the current oyster supply, an almost complete shift from 20 years ago when 70% of oysters were wild-caught.

Qiu echoed Branch’s conclusion, noting that the remaining wild oyster reefs are a mere fraction of their historical numbers.

“We are really relying on intensively farmed oysters, which means that they require a tonne of labour and personalised handling from people and sophisticated machinery,” she told me. “That is beginning to trickle down the supply chain. It comes into a restaurant, and the business has mark it up by a specific percentage to pay labour costs.”

While efforts to rehabilitate wild oyster reefs are underway, climate change complicates matters.

In addition to rising temperatures, extreme flooding and rain may alter ocean salinity, introduce new predators, or allow new diseases to thrive.

“Climate change hinders consistent growth… “There are just so many things that can go wrong when farming oysters,” Qiu added.

Despite the problems in the oyster market, demand has not slowed. According to Branch, interest in shellfish is increasing, fuelled by Gen Z and millennials eager to expand their culinary horizons. However, he claims that increased demand, along with dwindling supply, is driving prices even higher.

Inflation Comes For Your Oysters

“The industry has been trying to catch up and replace the loss of what we had with our wild-caught (supply),” he told me. “It’s still expanding, but it just hasn’t been as quick to fill the gap with what we had.”

Qiu is aware of the increasing interest in oysters as a luxury appetiser. She remains optimistic, however, that restoration efforts and sustainable farming will allow the sector to increase supply and stabilise pricing in the long run.

“We hope that one day we will get back to that space where you can have oysters as an affordable, healthy protein,” she told me.

SOURCE | CNN