Dr Hector Perera       London The bacteria campylobacter contaminated 70 per cent of fresh shop-bought chickens stocked by major retailers. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said the cumulative results from the first two quarters of its year-long survey of fresh chickens found 70 per cent tested positive for the presence of campylobacter, up from 59 per cent in […]

Dr Hector Perera     London Eating a lot of saturated fat can increase the levels of cholesterol in your blood. Having high cholesterol can increase your risk of heart disease, which includes heart attack and narrowed arteries also called atherosclerosis. Cholesterol is a fatty substance made by your liver and carried around the body in the […]

Dr Hector Perera     London Lard is pig fat in both its rendered and untendered forms. It is obtained from any part of the pig where there is a high proportion of adipose tissue. It can be rendered by steaming it or boiling it in water and then separating the insoluble fat from the water, or by the use of dry […]

Dr Hector Perera      London Cooking is chemistry, and every time you set foot in your kitchen, you walk into a laboratory, packed with high-tech gear and stocked with supplies, made just for you. People say cooking is an art, and that’s true, but the science of cooking is easier to grasp and repeat. Understanding it […]

Dr Hector Perera       London Anybody can cook like our kussi amma” who cooks nice tasty food due to long experience. Those days there were no modern facilities like gas and electric cookers, microwaves, ovens, fridges, freezers, electric gadgets to cut, grind and slice and no extractor fans either just smoking firewood stoves. When I think […]

Dr Hector Perera       London I am sure some of you must have watched these cooking programmes in British TV where so many chefs come to cook different styles of dishes from around the world. Most of the time they show off their skills to attract the public. Sometimes they pan fry thick pieces of steak […]

Dr Hector Perera       London We need to cook our food or depend on takeaway food or readymade foods that are available in supermarkets. The supermarket readymade foods must have been prepared a few days or even weeks ago in large scale then all what one has to do is to warm them up and eat. […]

Dr Hector Perera          London I admire many different types of cooking done in many British TV shows. They just don’t cook Asian type food only but so many varieties of dishes from around the world. There are so many types of chefs appear in TV shows to cook food from African, America, Caribbean, Chinese, East […]

Dr Hector Perera London Why so many cooks deny the importance of a scientific subject like chemistry? Cooking also obeys the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and also maths. Yet it is quite possible to cook without understanding any of these areas of science. Amazingly our Kussi amma cooked tasty rice and curries in a […]

Dr Hector Perera            London Climate change is a critical challenge facing humanity.  According to the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, rising global temperatures will very likely increase the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall events, adversely affecting agriculture, forests, water resources, human health and settlements.  These events will […]

Dr Hector Perera  London I am sure you are aware of the fact that energy is a big question for the general public, the price is always on the rise, not coming down at all. Unlike in hot weather countries, over here energy is used for heating and eating. A large number of families find […]

Dr Hector Perera         London If we take a simple molecule such as methane, it has formed due sp3 hybridisation of the carbon atom. Carbon has only two electrons in the p orbital and two electrons in the s orbital. Two of the p orbitals are empty at the start because two electrons are paired and […]

Dr Hector Perera       London I think cooking and chemistry cannot be separated, they go together. Any food we eat such as bread, rice, pasta, chicken, beef, vegetables are made out of complicated organic chemicals. There are other inorganic chemicals such as salt to flavour the food. The molecules in chemicals in the food do not […]

Dr Hector Perera      London Long-time ago we used nothing but firewood stoves in Sri Lanka for cooking but the things have changed for better. Now gas, electricity and in some places even solar power is used to get energy for cooking. Gas and electricity are not available for free unlike solar power but in solar […]

Dr Hector Perera     London It is possible that anyone can cook but cannot gain the experience just like that. I can remember back home in Sri Lanka they employed rural poor people as servants because they do not have any other way to earn a living so they become domestic servants. To have a servant […]

Dr Hector Perera       London I cannot believe if anyone said that they haven’t eaten any takeaways. In the past in Sri Lanka there were hardly any such places even in small towns but now, they are all over. Now you just pick up a phone to get the takeaways delivered to your doorstep, if you […]

Dr Hector Perera      London When I was in Colombo doing Advanced Level science, I was in a boarding house near Borella. That was a room only basis accommodation and we had to get our meals from outside. In the boarding house there were two others also attended to the same private college to do advanced […]

Dr Hector Perera    London Even in cooking chemistry is applied. Remember your kitchen is a kind of real chemistry laboratory.  All the cooking ingredients are nothing but chemicals that is vegetables, chickens, fish or even beef are nothing but complicated chemicals and they are mixed with a number of other chemicals such as in spices […]

Dr Hector Perera    London The consumption of meat has grown significantly during the last few years, with one estimate of the global average in 2000 to be 38 kg/capita. The United States of America has the highest consumption rate of meat in the world, estimated to be around 82 kg/capita in 2000 alone. You also […]

Dr Hector Perera     London There are a number of ways to cook our food for example, dry heat cooking, baking, steaming, grilling, roasting, boiling, stewing, frying, shallow frying, deep frying, barbequing and basting. In dry heat cooking methods, the food being cooked does not use water to cook the food. The food is left dry […]

Dr Hector Perera       London When we cook, sometimes we cook water based foods directly on the fire and sometimes we fry. We fry fish or stakes or even papadams, sprats and red chilies. I know fried red dry chilies are too hot to eat but a taste of it is very appetising. One cannot help […]

Dr Hector Perera       London Some energy can be saved if it was efficiently used but some people have no patience. They need to hurry up, their hands are full and the minds are occupied with too many things to do at the same time. Have you not witnessed some of those British TV chefs run […]

Dr Hector Perera     London When I mentioned indoor air pollution I meant the air inside in general the whole house. Most of the times the air pollution comes from the kitchen due to cooking but there are other things that contribute to air pollution. People burn various kinds of substances such as natural gas, coconut […]

Dr Hector Perera      London When you think of pollution, you probably think of that layer of smog above the city or that gross black smoke that puffs in your face when the bus drives by. If you happened to be around Dehiwala by pass you will witness the three wheelers and even buses are climbing […]

Dr Hector Perera        London Energy can be found in a number of different forms. It can be chemical (thermal energy) light or radiant energy, mechanical and also nuclear energy and electrical energy heat. Renewable energy is generated from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain and tides. These sources are considered renewable because they quickly […]

Dr Hector Perera         London The gas and electricity are not supplied for free, one has to pay for them in one way or the other. Fortunately oxygen needed to burn the cooking gas or methane is getting for free from the atmosphere. Simply because methane is there it does not burn unless it is reacted […]

Dr Hector Perera      London Many years ago in Sri Lanka nearly every single household had servants. They are like the part of the family and live at the place they work even cooking was a full time job. Sometimes they had more than one servant, a woman and a youngster to whom they just call […]

Dr Hector Perera         London We just assume what is meant by cooking without any proper definition. When we say cooking, it means applying some form of heat to the food so that it transforms into edible, safe or more palatable form due to chemical changes. Only due intermolecular, intramolecular and similar reactions with food and […]

Dr Hector Perera          London If energy is efficiently used in cooking then there is no wastage. If we are able use less energy and cook then we can say it is energy efficiency.  If someone used for example 100 units of gas for cooking rice for 25 minutes but some other person used 40 units […]

Dr Hector Perera     London Many people just ignore the cooking aroma and any gaseous products out given out while cooking. One must understand those chemicals and other gaseous products are not quite healthy to breath. The important thing is to have a good ventilation then to avoid using excess gas or electricity while cooking. The […]