Scientists discover new onion enzyme – will this stop tears in the kitchen?

September 16th, 2013

Food Preparation Humour

The scientific world is abuzz with a startling new discovery – the biochemical reaction that makes your eyes water when chopping onions may be far more complex than we initially thought!

Steady yourselves people, and return from the edge of your seat.  It turns out the enzyme that irritates the eyes is actually SEPARATE from the enzymes that give onions their flavour.

This earthshaking discovery was recently recognised by the scientific community, earning the prestigious gong of an Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

For the uninitiated, the Ig Nobel Prizes compared to the Nobel Prizes are kind of like the Razzies compared to the Oscars – a celebration of the ridiculous in the world of science, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Other winners from the 2013 Ig Nobel Prizes include:

• European researchers who confirmed, by experiment, that “people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.”
• Japanese researchers who assessed “the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.”
• Scottish researchers who determined that “First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.”

Onion cells under the microscope – how scientific!

The onion-related discovery was made by a team of Japanese scientists and published in the scientific journal Nature.  According to the research, while it is still true that our tears are a reaction to an enzyme that’s released when an onion’s cells are broken open while chopping, this enzyme (lachrymatory-factor synthase) is in fact COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the enzymes that produce the onion’s characteristic flavour (alliinase)!

So what does the discovery of this enzyme mean for us, the everyday onion-chopping plebs of the world?

Well, nothing much, really.

Sure, it’s nice to know the exact enzyme that causes you to break down in tears while chopping onions, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that onions make you cry.  If you break their cells open when chopping them, they release their enzymes.  If these get in your eyes (whether through the front of your eyes or the back of your nose), your eyes will start to water.

The scientists do reckon that having identified the exact enzyme that kicks off the waterworks, in time we could develop a strain of onion WITHOUT this enzyme, keeping all of the onion’s flavour while getting rid of the inconvenience.

But in the meantime, we can follow a whole range of increasingly bizarre old wives tales to do away with onion tears, from wearing goggles (as seen above), to sticking a spoon in our mouths, to singing.

Or you could just use a food processor (such as the Breville BFP650, seen above).  That’ll do the job for you in a fraction of the time and effort, and also minimise your exposure to lachrymatory-factor synthase.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s something in my eye…