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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> chains like Target are actively giving increasing space on their shelves to a slew of New Age players like [...] Hampton Creek (which sells a popular plant-based mayo)

I understand people who buy "junk mayo" (I do, more often than I'd like to admit) but I really don't understand why you would buy "high end mayo", because, if you're quality-conscious, how hard is it to make your own?

Or is this some kind of vegan mayo? But it's also possible to make your own mayonnaise with no eggs.

What is not possible however, is for a product that has to sit on shelves for any period of time to have no preservatives and no pasteurisation.

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I sometimes buy organic mayo that costs more, purely because it tastes better. I've also found this to be the case with vegetables and many other products, especially their peanut butter!

I don't care too much what is in the actual product unless its the lowest priced products which usually contain some disgusting stuff (mechanical chicken etc).

Note: this is comparing Sainsbury's standard to organic range.

Mechanical chicken? I'm 100% sure you made that up.

Some meat is "mechanically recovered". There are various levels of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_meat_recovery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat

Yeah I meant what DanBC said.

"What is not possible however, is for a product that has to sit on shelves for any period of time to have no preservatives and no pasteurisation."

The crowd most likely to buy that product likely will have a negative emotional illogical response to food irradiation but it would technically work.

For awhile irradiated ground beef was available and I bought it all the time, no difference in taste and 0% chance of food poisoning. I was talked out of it by someone making the point that sterilizing the product means the mfgr has no motivation to keep shit and other slaughterhouse waste out of the product, because no matter what it is, blood, maggots, urine, bodily waste, it'll all be made sterile and 0% chance of food poisoning. That was a little gross. Regardless if its irradiated or not, this is going to be an issue for anything preserved. If someone can sneeze into the mayo and nothing happens, that means little motivation will exist not to sneeze into the mayo, which is pretty gross.

> because no matter what it is, blood, maggots, urine, bodily waste, it'll all be made sterile and 0% chance of food poisoning.

I'm sorry, but that is incorrect and you were misled. Food poisoning is not directly caused by micro-organisms but by their excreted byproducts. If you take a rotten piece of meat, irradiate it and cook it well-done, you will still get sick. If you take a can that is bulging with botulism, irradiate it and thoroughly cook it, you will still get sick. Because while the micro-organisms are dead, the toxin (literal toxin, not "chemicals") is still present.

For an analogy: boiling water will sterilize it, but not do anything about turbid mud or arsenic or other non-living contaminates. Irradiating food does not mean you get to be lax in other standards.

I've been grinding my own beef in a food processor recently, for things like hamburgers. It started to worry me that the ground, preformed hamburger patties were actually cheaper than chuck roast. So, homemade hamburgers for me. And they come out better!

Here's the ingredient list[1] for their "mayo". Seems vegan to me. Looks like they offer varieties with and without preservatives. I didn't dig any further to see what else they put in the one with preservatives.

Ingredients: Non-GMO Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Filtered Water, Lemon Juice, White Vinegar, 2% or less of the following: Organic Sugar, Salt, Pea Protein, Spices, Modified Food Starch, Beta-Carotene. Just Mayo is also available with preservative.

[1] http://www.hamptoncreek.com/just-mayo

With that ingredient list, they should call it "Not Mayo". Just like a grilled turkey, swiss, and coleslaw on rye is not a Reuben, no matter how many times they call it that.

>With that ingredient list, they should call it "Not Mayo"

yup

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/business/unilever-sues-a-s...

Look at those marketing buzzwords.

There are other ways of removing bacteria and fungi (filtering, centrifuging, perhaps the ingredients are processed in such a way that bacteria are not present, think: using only the inner, possibly sterile part of a plant etc.) And if there are no constituents that have a fast natural decay time it is quite possible to make things last long without heating or preservatives, just keep the production process sterile.

Yes, "just" do this. So simple!

Making mayonnaise is easy and quick iff you have three steady hands.

Two hands and an electric mixer is all that's required. However, using it before it spoils is the hard part (for someone like me, who cooks for one).

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