http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/technology/beyond_future_kitchen.asp

Digital Kitchen.

This is a great idea, basically your whole kitchen is linked to a central computer, the idea is as old as Disney and the kitchen of the future but the implication is brand new. This will allow the kitchen to guide experienced through the cooking process. This is all based on networking, all your appliances are linked together and to the central unit. the microwave has a bar code scanner and over 4,000 programmed items that it will automatically program cook time. the computer will guide you threw your kitchen and allow you to see what ingredients you have and which you need. I feel that this can drastically increase the speed of quick service kitchens by cutting down on time spent looking for ingredients and looking up recipes. also it can possibly predict when ingredients need to be ordered and prevent running out of things. Which can also save money by keeping better inventory. Obviously there will be a few bugs to work out but overall this will make the kitchen experience ten times better.

digital menu boards

tp://www.wirespring.com/Solutions/restaurants.html

This article is basically about digital menu boards and how they are growing in the field of food service. The menu board gives a whole bunch of opportunities such as faster ordering and no wait , it allows the customer to pay right there and to see the order before it is confirmed.

it seems like a good idea, i mean no hassle, no wait, but the cost for this is probably a huge upfront cost, but it probably pays off in the long run since it would cost you more to pay for an hourly employee overtime.

What makes it not so good is that it takes jobs away from people, it makes the dining experience a little impersonal and most of all what happens when the machine's go down, how can you serve any customers.

digital menu boards

tp://www.wirespring.com/Solutions/restaurants.html

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no4/osterhol.htm

Food Irradiation.

This article is basically a neutral explanation of food irradiation. It includes all the information, the positives and the negatives.

More or less this is a form of pasteurization (sorry Louis) that doesn't require any heat to be applied to the food. This is good because by nature heat changes the flavor of foods, and you don't want to taste scalded milk when you take a bite of cheerios. Food irradiation works by exposing food to low doses of gamma rays (highly energized electromagnetic radiation caused by nuclear decay), X-rays, and a beam of electrons. As most people know radiation can kill cells by interrupting their DNA. this causes bacteria to die but no change in taste of the food.

But don't things absorb radiation you might ask? Yes they do, it is very easy to make something radio active, like rubbing a magnet over a pin, but you need a lot of magnet and a lot of rubbing to make the pin. Same with radiation, you need a significant amount to cause a secondary object to become harmful. So with food so little radiation is used it doesn't literally irradiate your milk, it just kills bacteria. the problem lies in producing the radiation used.

I feel that this is a relatively cheap and effective way to sterilize foods (like meats) to prevent food born illness. Cobalt-60 has a half life of about 5 years, that's a lot of time to sanitize food. A lot cheaper than having to burn oil to heat things up.

http://www.fesmag.com/article/CA6709255.html