Hey, let's look at a whole bunch of carbs under a microscope, see what it looks like — chips,
bread, whatever Cheetos are. Right here is what most of this starts with: a solitary kernel of
grain — wheat, in this case. Look at that, It looks like a seed, doesn't it? Because it is a
seed. Humans primarily eat seeds. This is a counter of seeds — wheat, corn, rice. These
are all the seeds of grass plants. That line down the middle of the wheat called the crease,
that's where it had previously stuck to the flower of the wheat plant. And then these little hairs
over here called the brush — this is the remnants of the stigma from the flowers. Try to cut it open
through the crease there, and then you can see the fluffy white stuff inside that looks like mashed
potatoes — that's the endosperm, or the starch. That's the part that is tasty — the part that
basically all of these things are made out of. Just the calorie part. That's the carbs,
the endosperm. Down here in the corner, I believe we see the germ. That's the actual
embryo of the plant. That's where a lot of the real nutrition is. Historically the reason that
you milled out the germ the bran is that it contained fats, and fats go rancid in time.
So milling that stuff off — just going straight down to the white, fluffy parts, there — makes
your flour last longer. That's historically why we have white rice, white flour, all that stuff.
If that crease on the wheat kernel looks familiar, it's probably because you might've seen them on
a rolled oats. Naturally, a grain of oat looks almost identical to a grain of wheat — it's just
a little bit longer and pointier. The way they arrive at these flat little guys is they just
pass them through a pair of metal rollers — makes them cook quicker. We look at a kernel of corn,
maize — same basic deal. Lines — those striations running up against it. So striated — it's ripped,
this corn. So, cut that in half — you can see the germ really clearly there. The concentric
layers of it there look like leaves, because that's what they are. That's called the plumule.
It's the shoot that is ready to spring forward with a new corn plant to be fed by all of the
energy, the starch that's in the endosperm there. So of course, if you grind the grains
of wheat up into a powder, you get flour. This is whole wheat flour — "whole wheat" meaning
that they have not removed all of the brand and germ. It's not just endosperm, although you can
see that the endosperm is still the majority of the bulk in there — all those little white flakes,
that's just starch endosperm. But the big kinda chunks of brown stuff — that's going to
be the bran coat and the little bits of germ. Look at that little speck of green. I wonder if
that was a piece of the straw that got in there. I have some wheat growing in the backyard. You want
to see it? Yep. That's wheat. And if you harvest the seeds and grind them down into a powder,
you get this. This is whole wheat bread, right? Look at the crust first. And look at that — it
just looks like a spider's web. And I think that what we're seeing there is the gluten structure.
That's those gluey proteins in wheat. Look past the crust a little bit there, and then,
wow, look at that. Looks like some kind of H.R. Giger thing, right? It looks like an
egg sack — a network of egg sacks. Looking in the sort of flesh of the bread there,
you can see all those little brown specks — little shards of wheat bran and germ. What's
that giant thing? Oh, that must be a seed. I think this bread has some whole rando seeds
in it, but remember — it's all seeds. Look at it from the side. Wow. It's just
network of caverns where gas and steam and stuff built up as it was baking. So if you
mill off the bran and germ and everything, and you only make bread from the endosperm, you get
white bread — Wonder Bread, the whitest of bread. Look at the crust first again — doesn't look that
different, right? I mean, because ultimately the crust is brown because of the bake — because of
the browning reactions that happened at very high heat that you only get on the exterior of
the bread. Turn around, look on the inside. Look at the little brown specks. I suppose that is a
little bit of wheat bran. They're not able to mill it all out. There's still a little bit left.
It's funny how, when you think about it, at least in American English, we would commonly call this
"white bread" and this "wheat bread," which is funny because they're both wheat bread,
right? They're both made with wheat. This is whole wheat bread. We simply truncate that phrase by
taking out the "whole" part and just saying it's "wheat bread." I suppose a more logical truncation
or shortening of that would have been to call it "whole bread," and this — I don't know — "not
whole bread"? It's more accurate to think of it that way. And for contrast, here's like a loaf
of real bread — bread from a bakery, not from a factory. You can see that fine white flour
around the top. Look on the bottom — the base of the bread. That looks geological, doesn't it?
That of course is the corn meal. Corn meal — used in baking
basically is a lubricant, just to keep it from sticking to the peel that they used to transfer
the bread into the oven. That really looks like Mars. Tear it open. Fluffy starch just
looks like mashed potatoes. By way of comparison, let's look at some mashed potatoes. Basically the
same stuff. I mean, a potato is not technically a seed. It's still the thing that the new plant
grows up out of. And therefore it has energy stores in the form of starch. And in fact, I made
this mash from my latest box of HelloFresh, the sponsor of this video and America's #1 meal kit.
We got the low-calorie plan this week because February. Everything in here was super tasty.
And honestly, just having the boxes show just up at the house nudges us to make
real food more often instead of just eating quick junk, and that's probably better for us,
regardless of which particular meal plan we are on — whether it's vegetarian, or family-friendly,
whatever. The meals only take half an hour to cook. There's no going to the grocery store.
There's no buying huge boxes of stuff that you might not use all of. Everything is pre-portioned,
which makes a HelloFresh meal like this a lot less wasteful. There's actually a University of
Michigan study that found that the carbon footprint of a meal like this is actually
lower than a comparable one that you cooked from groceries. And the recipes
are consistently terrific and very satisfying. You want to try it? Do us both a favor and go
to HelloFresh.com. Use code 10ADAMRAGUSEA to get 10 free meals, including free shipping.
That's 10 free meals with my code 10ADAMRAGUSEA at HelloFresh.com. Thank you, HelloFresh. I've got a
couple different kinds of pasta here. So here's just like a pretty standard
linguine, dried. And then here, imported from Italy — linguine cut with a bronze die,
meaning extruded through a die made a bronze rather than stainless steel, or coated with
Teflon, I've heard about. So here's the bronze die linguine. And then here's the standard linguine.
Look at how much smoother that is. In theory, this is superior the bronze die one, because
it creates a more of a textured surface that'll hold more sauce on the noodle. That's something
that we should test another day. Little letter pasta for soup — just curious to see what this is.
Very chuffed up surface — you wonder if that's just from them grinding against each other in
the bag. A for Adam. Look at one with ridges on it. Orecchiette. These are bronze cut
as well. Those ridges — they looked like arches up close. Like the side of a church or something. The
Italians would like that. Very different kind of pasta: Thai-style rice noodles. Looks like bugs
or snakes or something. And again — little specks of bran from the rice grain still left in there.
So, brown rice — rice that has had its outer hull removed, but the bran coat is still reasonably
intact. Remember, of course, that that bran coat has fat in it. The fat will go rancid in time.
So, historically people just grind this down, to grind away the outer layers, get rid of them.
And then you have white rice. You can definitely tell the difference, but yeah, you can still see
little bits of brown — bran left that didn't get milled off. And from the side — white
rice — it looks like a larva, doesn't it? See that part in the end that's kinda scooped out a little
bit of each one? That's where the germ was. Popped out of there — broken out through milling.
Now, what is this? Is this some grain of rice? I mean, it says rice on the box. No, not really.
Rice Krispies are not grains of rice that have been toasted and fluffed up. It's a dough that
they make out of ground up rice, flour and sugar and stuff. The modern breakfast
cereal industry began with these — Kellogg's Corn Flake, in a 19th century, in Michigan,
in the United States. A guy named John Kellogg had a sanitarium, or a place where he would heal
people — ostensibly. And he created this food for them, basically by cooking grains in water
the way you normally would, but then drying them and then pressing them through rollers — just like
those rolled oats — to make these little flakes. Ultimately it was John Kellogg's brother, Will,
who saw the commercial potential for these. "Hey, we should put sugar in
these." And that caused a rift between the two brothers that never healed.
Let's look at something really profane, like Fruit Loops. It's easy to forget with all of these
highly processed breakfast cereals that they're all just grains — seeds. Remember,
they're all seed pastes. in this case, it's mostly corn with sugar, and flavorings, and colorings
and stuff in them. Not that I'm complaining — I love this stuff. I mean, something like Frosted
Mini-Wheats is slightly less processed. The wheat has not been turned into a paste, or a flour,
or a dough and then shaped. It's the actual wheat berries that have been passed through a thing that
looks like a paper shredder. That looks gnarly up close. Look at that — just a forest of starch.
Look at the sugar side. Oh, sweet sugar. Wow, you can almost see the crystals on the
frosting. The other one I really want to see is Cinnamon Toast Crunch — certainly my childhood
favorite. Look at those big crystals of sugar. You can see them — little square
crystals or sugar. That's why it's good. Of course they have those cereals in things like
Chex Mix. Hey, it's a wholesome breakfast, right? It's got cereal in it. Look at that,
it's like being in carb prison. I think that's salt. See those little white crystals?
That's got to be the salt. There's other things in here of course — there's the little brown things
that look like Melba toast. I don't know what that is, but yeah. Look at the salt crystals in there.
It's like the Fortress of Solitude. And the last interesting thing to look at in here is
pretzels — there's little bits of pretzel. So the way that they get pretzels to look like they do,
is by taking the dough and then boiling it in a highly alkaline solution. That basically
pre-cooks the starch a little bit before it then bakes, and so you get this very dark brown,
smooth layer. I'm curious to see if these other snack foods will have similar salt crystal shapes.
Lay's Classic potato chips. I don't see any salt in there. Teeny tiny crystals, it must be.
What if I backlight the chip? One thing you can see is the bubbles — the steam inside
the potato. Wow. Look at that. It's like the lava. Let's try something different. Try the
Pringles — potato chips not actually made out of slices of potato, but rather potato flour,
potato starch basically that has been just made into a dough and then shaped into these
perfect little ellipses, or whatever that's called in three dimensions. I don't know.
And if we look at it from the side, those are salt crystals, right?
Little teeny ones. Alright. Here's something that's definitely going to be visible — Doritos,
right? It's just a corn tortilla chip with all kinds of seasoning on it. There we go. It looks
like Christmas. OK, now I see something. I believe that is MSG — monosodium glutamate, which of
course is why Doritos taste so tasty. Because if you look at pure MSG — which in the United
States is sold under this brand name, Accent, you can buy it at the store. Just MSG crystals
are always — whenever I've seen them — little bars like that. Look at that. Alright now.
The grand finale: Cheetos. Just another corn dough that has been fried and topped with a cheese
powder. When I was little, I ate a bunch of these and then ejected them. Never been able to eat
them since. And I guess my takeaway there is, it looks like everything else on this counter, right?
It looks like the bread. It looks like everything because all of these things are just seed pastes
that have been cooked. Go enjoy your seed paste. And I guess I have plenty to enjoy myself.