Hi,
This article has some interesting points to consider especially if you
are using papercrete made from cardboard in your kitchen. I use mixed
paper and especially like mixes made from white bond. Others use
newsprint. Wonder how much it matters, as long at there are not volatile
toxics?
Bad perfume: Cardboard's intense scents
Wet cardboard and food should not share the same air space
By Janet Raloff
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/authored/id/18/name/Janet_Raloff>
Web edition : Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
We often joke about food that lacks any perceptible flavor as tasting
like cardboard. In fact, cardboard's blandness is one facet of its
appeal to the food industry. Manufacturers pack foods in cardboard and
pizzeria's deliver their cheese-topped pies in it precisely because it
won't affect the flavor of their products. Or at least that's been the
presumption.
A pair of researchers in Germany has now catalogued 37 smelly compounds
emitted by cardboard — chemicals that they argue could indeed temper the
flavor and scent of foods. "Most of the identified compounds were
described as odor-active [i.e. smelly] cardboard constituents for the
first time," report Michael Czerny of the Fraunhofer Institute for
Process Engineering and Packaging
<http://www.ivv.fraunhofer.de/index_e.html> in Freising and Andrea
Buettner
<http://univis.uni-erlangen.de/form?__s=2&dsc=anew/tel_view&pers=nat/dchph/llmch/bttner&anonymous=1&founds=med/PI/LAPPA/bttner,///KZ/kv_bea/bttner,nat/dchph/llmch/bttner,tech/IMMD/IMMD6/bttner,med/KZ/ZKFR/bttner,zwiss/rrze/dbuvf/bttner,tech/IE/LEEAS/bttner,rw/fbwiwi/LPW/bttner,zentra/abteil_5/g1/gerlac,nat/zentr/bttner,//dphy/IAP/pbmt1/bttner,rw/recht/IZZ/LBRZG/bttner,akadem/bd/zentr/wlfing,med/uzuleh/c4medp/wlfing&sem=2009w&tel_nosem=1&__e=530>
of University Erlangen-Nuernberg <http://www.uni-erlangen.org/>.
They found some of these compounds present in relatively high amounts,
although their predominantly woody/musty notes tended to remain below
the radar screen until cardboard got wet — as might occur if your pizza
was delivered on a rainy night, or a food warehouse was not humidity
controlled.
Indeed, "The aroma profile changed drastically when the cardboard was
moistened," becoming "intense" and yucky — as in woody and musty with
very pronounced fatty and moldy highlights, Czerny and Buettner report
in an upcoming issue of the /Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry/
<http://pubs.acs.org/journal/jafcau>.
Contributing to the overall off-putting smell were the leathery-inky
scents of 3-propylphenol and 3-methyphenol. Another 29-letter-long
compound smelled metallic and benzothiazole imparted the smell of rubber
or car tires. Yum.
And it gets better. Czerny and Buettner describe two constituents of
cardboard's scent — 4-methylphenol and 4-ethylphenol — as having a
"horse stable-like, fecal" smell. Other off-gassed chemicals smelled:
"cheesy, sweaty;" soapy, fatty, mushroomlike, citrusy, spicy, woody or
coconutty. A compound known as 2-methoxyphenol seemed to have a
particularly complex scent — at once smoky, vanillalike and sweet.
The chemists aren't sure why most of these chemicals don't assault our
noses while the cardboard remains dry, but speculate that some might
remain walled off in cellulose until contacted by water — "which acts
like a solvent."
In a followup experiment, the pair showed cardboard's off-scents could
transfer to salad oil, presumably a substance meant to model fatty foods.
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