Why There's Antifreeze in Your Toothpaste: The Chemistry of Household Ingredients by Simon Quellen Field

This book intimated me at first. Many, but not all, of the chemicals, minerals and polymers referred to in this book have an illustration of their molecular structure. Since carbon atoms are assumed to have bonds with 4 hydrogen atoms, their presence is shortened with a straight line that is often off kilter to represent another shared bond with another hydrogen atom.

In other words, to keep the image of molecular structure from being too cluttered, it's simplified with straight lines and angles. I forgot to mention that atoms that share electrons are represented with parallel lines, adding to the confusion. The first 3 chapters are filled with a glut of information about how electrons are shared and atoms are removed within their structure, I kept having to refer to the introduction that explained all of that complexity of everyday chemistry. 

I was about ready to trash this book. But the next morning, I found myself explaining some of the chemical makeup of  teen favorite foods, such as Flaming Hot Cheetos. Food dyes in foods are a big political issue right now and I had some students asking about if their favorite snacks were going to be discontinued. I really didn't understand why brominated vegetable oil would be in orange soda in the first place. Thanks to this book, I now understand that orange flavonoids are composed of fats which do not bind with water. That means without the emulsifying effect of the bromides, your orange soda will separate like an unshaken bottle of Italian dressing. Plus it wouldn't look orange. Having just read about all that in this book, I was able to explain that thanks to the government ban, you would still have your favorite foods. Only, I imagine your unopened bottle of Sunkist is going to look very different in the next couple of years.

I started to see that the teaching resource that I was hoping this book would be in my culinary classes actually coming to pass. But I was still overwhelmed by the writing since this was a college level read. So I set a goal to read 5 pages a day. Eventually I began to learn about how emulsifiers, cleansers, flavoring agents and food dye are not just made but crafted into other products that we use in our everyday lives. Not all of it bad, either.

The antifreeze mentioned in this book is actually a natural chemical that by itself does prevent products from freezing. But without another chemical agent added to the antifreeze that helps prevent damage to vehicles, it's not toxic to humans.

If you teach CTE Culinary Arts or Foods and Nutrition Courses in either middle or high school, you should get this book! If your department head is anything like mine, you're expected to cross teach from a variety of subjects in hopes of boosting those ever important testing scores. This book can help you work on making Chemistry and bio-sciences more relatable to your students. Just don't feel bad if you have to do a review of that section on how to read and understand a structural formula more than once. Lord knows that I was still checking it over with just a couple of pages left to read. 

Maybe I should have paid better attention in Chemistry when I was in high school...

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.