Pages

Feb 15, 2012

Why Horses Make Good Glue

If you ever drive through Northern France, you'll see a lot of butchers that sell horse meat. You'll also see a lot of glue factories. The two are very definitely linked — but why is it that horses make good glue?

One word: collagen. Over at Slate, there's a great explanation about the long, and oddly fascinating, history of glue-making. But what it all boils down to is that one protein, collagen. You find it in cartilage and tendons, and lurking inside bones. If you boil enough of those body parts down with some water, you get a gelatin.

Yep: that's the stuff that makes Jell-O set and Gummy bears chewy. And it makes damn good glue, too. But it's not that horse glue is actually better than any other animal glue; it's just that historically horses were plentiful, so it made sense to use them. More here.

6 comments:

Outcast said...

Have to admit it kind of sickens me to realise that horses are used in that kind of thing. I just try to keep it away from mind though when eating stuff using that.

Shockgrubz said...

I love Jell-O. I'm just glad they don't have it in horse flavor.

Anonymous said...

Ngc

MynameisEarl said...

Well horse meat is edible you know, especially in France and the UK. The meat is pretty lean and nice so I don't really worry about things like that.

Hey, it's edible. :)

Anonymous said...

I found this out when I read Animal Farm. It was horrible what they did to Boxer.

G said...

Horse meat's good...