2023-05-15 08:09:13
Time.news – Mushrooms are better than ice to keep food cool. This was verified by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University who documented an extraordinary cooling capacity in yeasts, molds and fungi. Indeed, the research team found that fungi and other yeasts and mouldsthey stay cooler than their surroundings and he also explained why they stay so fresh: because they contain a lot of water, just think of how mushrooms shrink when cooked, and gradually release it in a fungal form of sweating which lowers their temperature , say the microbiologists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mostly for fun, the team even built a mushroom-powered picnic cooler. On walks in the woods during the Covid-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins University microbiologist Radamés Cordero was testing out his lab’s new thermal camera, which records infrared, or heat, as images. He and his colleague Arturo Casadevall planned to use the camera to see how the dark pigments in some mushrooms affect surface temperatures.
On his hikes, Cordero pictured about 20 types of wild mushrooms, and all of them, regardless of color, were fresher than their surroundings. Later, in the laboratory, researchers discovered that some species, such as the brown American star amanitawere only 1°C or 2°C cooler than their surroundings, but the mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus was nearly 6°C cooler.
Plus, 19 types of molds and yeasts, including brewer’s yeast, the mold that produces penicillin and some human pathogens, were also fresh, especially near the center of their colonies. Even at near freezing air temperatures, the colonies were about 1°C cooler.
The temperatures of single-celled fungi came as a surprise, as they have much less surface area per volume than fungi, even when grouped in colonies, due to heat loss. But the work suggests that “this phenomenon is a widespread feature of the fungal kingdom,” says Cordero.
In the experiment, Cordero and Casadevall inserted two air holes into a small Styrofoam packing box containing less than a pound of button mushrooms, installed a computer exhaust fan in one hole to blow air through of it and placed the box in a larger Styrofoam container.
With the fan on, the temperature of the larger container is dropped 10°C in 40 minutes and stayed there for half an hour. “You won’t freeze the water,” through cooling the mushrooms, Casadevall says. But the prototype could easily keep a six-pack and lunch chilled for a quick picnic, he says, “and you can eat mushrooms afterwards.”
#picnic #cool #Mushrooms #dry #ice