Re: [DIYbio] I want to test my own food - where do I start

Along those lines, it's tough to be downhill of a field doused with pesticides.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/23/hawaii-birth-defects-pesticides-gmo


 On Aug 23, 2015, at 3:38 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz787@gmail.com> wrote:
 
 Can you tell us what country you're in? It can help determine what the
 best path forward might be, from a supply-chain standpoint, legal,
 etc...
 
 The answer to your question lies largely in the domain of chemistry
 and physics. You need to figure out how to determine naturally present
 chemicals from the non-naturally present chemicals. For example, milk
 fat vs palm oil: these are likely to be mostly the same chain-length
  (number of carbons in the oil molecule chain) but probably differ
 slightly in their populations (maybe milk fat has mostly 16 carbons,
 but some percentage of 14 carbon molecules too... while palm oil is
 mostly 16 carbon molecules, with some percentage of 18 carbon
 molecules). Along with the chain-length population differences, which
 way the molecule is bent at each carbon could be slightly different.
 It is much easier to distinguish chains of different length which all
 have the same bending configuration, than it is to distinguish between
 chains of different length with different bending configurations...
 for example... with simple techniques (bending configuration aside,
 the chain-length largely determines the melting/solidification point).
 
 So when you move on to other molecules... searching antibiotics
 amongst all the tens/hundreds of thousands of different molecule types
 floating in all the cells  of the food you buy... you can see the task
 is HUGE.
 
 You have to be very clever (for example, some very powerful machines
 use very smart and beautiful solutions to extract data and make sense
 of it, often these use tools or data-processing based on complex math)
 , or very patient.... or usually both.
 
 Personally, I think there are some common-sense techniques that you
 could start applying now, to avoid food that is worse quality...
 without investing in equipment, rather spending time learning about
 which foods are more susceptible to contamination to begin (i.e. sweet
 fruits tend to have heavier pesticide use). Also humans have an immune
 system and other ways to deal with toxicity... so for example if you
 wanted to have a baby and raise it, the food the mother consumes
 during pregnancy and while nursing, and the food the baby receives in
 general the first few years... is much more  important to be concerned
 with. After early development, humans are much more able to defend
 against bad chemicals and infections.
 
 If you really want to get into equipment... I recommend learning
 about: UV/Vis spectrophotometry, FTIR, Gas-Chromatography, Mass
 Spectrometry, Raman spectrophotometry, Thin-layer chromatography,
 fractional distillation, redox indicators, ELISA, antibiotic
 susceptibility assays, PCR... and as many related topics as you come
 across.
 
 Cheers!
 -Nathan
 
 On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 3:56 AM, Philippo Möller
 <philippomoller@gmail.com> wrote:
 Hello
 
 I live in a third world country and it seems like there is no bio hack
 community here. I am concerned about food and drinks I am buying and
 consuming here on a daily basis. I do  not trust the food safety authorities
 here. For example, there are rumors here that diary products in the stores
 are not made from milk but from palm oil. I would like to test such things
 myself. Furthermore, I am conscious about excessive use of antibiotics in
 meat and vegetable production. Is it possible to test such things myself?
 What about pesticides? What about other poisons and pollutants that might
 end up in food products?
 
 Basically I would like to test all of my food before I consume it. I am
 willing to invest time in studying the subject and I am also happy to build
 a little home lab. I'm also planning to publish my findings for other people
 in my country to read.
 
 So where do I start? Are there any good websites? When I google "food
 testing at home" all I get are pages for food intolerant people. I am
 looking for a website with instructions on how to perform tests and what
  equipment I will need to buy for my lab.
 
 Any help would be greatly appreciated and I am sure this question has been
 answered somewhere already but I couldn't find it.
 
 
 
 
 
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