The Subway fast-food chain has decided to remove one ingredient from their bread recipes because, for whatever reason, that same ingredient is used to make yoga-mats. The bubble-headed bleach blondes on the five o'cock news had a field day with their yuck-comments over this story.
A little perspective: The airplanes I have flow in the last twenty years have a fire-detection system that works extremely well. Many years ago there used to be a lot of false alarms indicating engine fires that were not really there. Protocol is for the engine to be shut down and and a fire suppressant to be released into the engine.
These false alarms rarely happen any more because modern sensors are made with materials called eutectic salts. Without going all periodic table (because I can't) these salts help measure both temperature and change in electrical resistance to detect a real fire.
So Subway uses salt in it's products like I do in my very safe airplane! Is there a yuck factor here? Not really. Whatever it was that was in yoga mats and helped bread rise is gone now. So are we better off now? I have no idea.
But it is funny how we run away from things when the news story sounds odd or the late-night comedians have a few laughs over the story of the day.
