FoodLife & Style

Japanese company makes ‘tear-free onions’

The sobbing of a chef as he chops onions in the kitchen could be a thing of the past thanks to one Japanese company which says it has produced a tear-free vegetable.
 
Scientists say they have managed to disable the production of a powerful substance an onion releases as the knife slices into it, cutting down on the pungent fumes that bring tears to the eyes.
 
House Foods Group said in a press release that they bombarded the brown bulb with irradiating ions in a process that drastically reduces the level of a certain enzyme that is key to this process.
 
A spokesman said no decision had yet been made on whether they would commercialize their tear-free onions.
 
The company's researchers won the Ig Nobel Prize — an award handed out to honor achievements organizers consider unintentionally funny — in 2013 for their discovery of the biochemical process behind how onions make people blubber.
 

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