The green fried toothpicks are "fragrant", and the Food Safety Bureau issued a reminder: Please don't eat the toothpicks!

Image source: Internet

About a month ago, someone uploaded a food video on TikTok and received tens of thousands of likes. What was that food? Deep-fried toothpicks!

Who would have thought that toothpicks could be used as food? The method of making fried toothpicks is very simple. You just need to put green toothpicks in a flat oil pan.

Image source: tiktok

After a while, the toothpick began to deform and twist.

Image source: tiktok

The toothpicks look like this after being fried. You can fill a large plate with them. A box of fried toothpicks is quite a large portion:

Image source: tiktok

Fried toothpicks can also be put into an inflatable bag, add dipping sauce and shake it, which will greatly improve the appearance.

Image source: tiktok

Doesn’t it look a bit like a smaller version of the rice rolls we ate on the street when we were kids?

Image source: Internet

You can also find a lot of Korean-made fried toothpick making guide videos on the Internet, which have quite a lot of likes and views, and some videos have even received 4.5 million views.

Fried toothpicks have even been featured on a Korean online food show, Mukbang, a popular channel in South Korea that features big eaters or unusual dishes. It seems to have become a new food trend.

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This green toothpick is not an ordinary bamboo or wooden toothpick, but a toothpick made of special materials, an environmentally friendly and degradable toothpick.

Image source: amazon

It is made of 93% to 95.5% starch, 0.5% to 1% sorbitol, 2% to 4.5% honey, 0.5% to 2% glycerin, 0.3% to 0.5% egg yolk, 0.5% to 1% fruit flavor, 0.2% to 0.5% edible coloring and other raw materials, which are mixed according to weight ratio and then go through various processes in sequence. Because green edible coloring is added, the toothpick looks green.

Image source: tiktok

From this perspective, fried toothpicks are essentially fried starch, not much different from fried French fries or potato chips.

The reason why the toothpicks become curled and puffed during frying is that when the starch is heated, its structure becomes loose, and water penetrates into the starch granules, causing the granules to swell and burst. During the frying process, water evaporates quickly from the starch, resulting in a golden and crispy crust on the surface of the food.

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At higher temperatures, starch and protein or sugar in food will undergo Maillard reaction, producing brown pigments and aroma substances. This reaction gives fried foods their unique color and flavor. Due to the large amount of water evaporation and starch gelatinization, the starch structure after frying becomes harder and more fragile, which is an important feature of the taste of fried foods.

Image source: ruters

This toothpick is made of starch, so it is flexible and tastes good (after all, it is edible). The most important thing is that it is easy to decompose quickly after use and does not pollute the environment. But because the main material is starch, it was unexpectedly invented by Koreans as a frying material.

Fried toothpicks are so popular that it is said that children clamored to eat toothpick fries after watching the video. Later, relevant Korean authorities stepped forward and issued a statement to remind everyone, "The safety of toothpicks as food has not been verified, please do not eat toothpicks."

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Fried toothpicks are best not to be eaten. One of the potential safety hazards is that 0.5% to 1% sorbitol is added to them. Sorbitol is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol that is widely used as a low-calorie sweetener and humectant. It can be found in many "sugar-free" or "low-sugar" foods, chewing gum, candy, ice cream, and certain medicines and oral care products. Although sorbitol is safe for most people, excessive consumption may indeed have adverse effects on some people.

This is because in the case of excessive intake, sorbitol is not completely absorbed by the small intestine. After entering the large intestine, it is fermented by the intestinal flora to produce gas and is attracted to the intestine to absorb water, resulting in soft stools or diarrhea. In addition, for sensitive people, even a relatively small amount of sorbitol may cause diarrhea. This is especially important in children because their tolerance may be lower.

Children simply cannot control their mouths when it comes to this kind of delicious-looking fried food. If they really eat a bunch of fried toothpicks, the probability of developing gastrointestinal problems is still very high.

Image source: tiktok

According to the logic that anything made of starch can be fried, then many things can be fried, because now many tools can be made of starch. This type of material is called starch-based material, which aims to reduce environmental pollution and improve the sustainability of products. For example, the following is a disposable, environmentally friendly and biodegradable starch knife and fork.

Image source: Online e-commerce platform

So, is deep-fried knives and forks the next Korean delicacy?

References

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleo/comments/2bjsxx/my_experience_with_fermented_high_meat/

[2]https://www.vice.com/en/article/akggdz/people-eat-raw-meat-high

Planning and production

Source: Bring Science Home (ID: steamforkids)

Author: Su Chengyu

Editor: He Tong