This is a lighthearted topic and a well-written article.
But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.
author here - i have no view on the toxicity of tartrazine other than its declared food safe.
its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!
I'm trying to imagine the origin story for this science, and I feel like the most fun one is that somebody wanted to make Doritos flavored chicken and accidentally discovered that the marinade turned the chicken breast transparent.
Some exotic fish and frog species are completely transparent. So one might wonder what makes meat opaque. Then wonder how to get the opaque out of other meat. I don't know where doritos comes in.
They use tartrazine that is a common dye for food, not crushed Doritos. They need a lot of dye to change the internal refraction index and make the meat transparent. So they choose it. From the research article https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11931656/
> It is a hygroscopic compound with a high solubility in water and minimal reactivity. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that this molecule exhibits no adverse effects or systemic toxicity at doses up to 2 g per kilogram of body weight (14). As a result, it is widely used as an artificial food dye in products such as flavored chips (for example, Doritos).
But what it reveals about our relationship with food is a little unsettling. The intensely chemical nature of Doritos and the whole notion of turning flesh into something alien - it’s all very far removed from food as a source of nourishment and of natural origin.
its important to note though that there is no mystery or chemical nastiness behind the transparency effect - it's just changing the refractive index of water!
> It is a hygroscopic compound with a high solubility in water and minimal reactivity. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that this molecule exhibits no adverse effects or systemic toxicity at doses up to 2 g per kilogram of body weight (14). As a result, it is widely used as an artificial food dye in products such as flavored chips (for example, Doritos).