Popularization
20 April 2015
Laurie Caron, chemist, M.Sc. – Popularization In the last few weeks, I saw many discussions on LinkedIn/Facebook groups about aromatherapy. Some people seem to be highly concerned by this subject and they want to know how to use essential oils safely. So, I asked myself what was my knowledge about this topic? First of all,
Popularization
15 March 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization We have previously seen a worked example of essential oil analysis. Hydrosols can be analysed in about just the same way as essential oils. Yet, there is one huge difference between a pure essential oil and an hydrosol: the latter is always a solution. This implies some specific
Popularization
14 February 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization Any business in the field of natural substances production (encompassing health products, extracts, refined phytochemicals, herbs, essential oils, and anything comprising one of these ingredients) will eventually have to take a stand about the kind of quality control that should be performed on its products. In many cases,
Popularization
9 January 2015
Laurie Caron – Popularization In recent months, a particular topic emerged in the media: food fraud. But what is it? By definition, there is food fraud when food is marketed with intentional misleading information to the consumer1. An example of a rather eloquent fraud, nicknamed “Horsegate“, took place in 2013 in Europe. Frozen meals
Popularization
9 November 2014
Alexis St-Gelais – Popularization One of the strangest aspects of the life of a chemist is to constantly be working with something we can (almost) never see as a unit: a molecule. In fact, a considerable part of our job is to draw conclusions from data obtained indirectly in order to deduce the structure of
Popularization
31 October 2014
Hubert Marceau – Popularization Figure 1: S. lycopersicum (Source) Have you ever heard of Tomtatoes? It is tomato plant, Solanum lycopersicum (Figure 1), graft on a potato plant, Solanum tuberosum. This gives a plant that bear edible roots (tubers to be more precise) and fruits. Why not start using all the rest and make a salad with