Additionally since nitrous oxide is widely abused for recreational use, in what way is nitrous the preferred method for whipped cream instead of gasses like CO2 or O2.
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CO2 adds an acidic taste to the cream. O2 can make it go rancid. Nitrogen is bulky because it can’t be liquified at room temperature (oxygen has the same problem). N2O can be compressed into a liquid, and it’s soluble in fat, so it makes it go a lot creamier than nitrogen or air would. It’s also harmless in small amounts, odorless, tasteless and non-flammable (though it can make flammable stuff burn more fiercely).
Edit: and if it’s abused, it’s probably the drug with the least harmful side effects, milder than both tobacco and alcohol. It’s not without harm however, and long-time abuse can lead to vitamin B12 deficiency, which causes neurological issues. It’s also possible to get frostbite or lung damage when using it wrong, or even death by suffocation if the pure gas is inhaled through a mask, which the incapacitated user is then unable to remove.
You can’t use oxygen with whipped cream because it would oxidize the cream and make it taste rancid. You also can’t use CO2 because CO2 is mixed with water(which is present in the cream) some of it turns into carboxylic acid. The carboxylic acid curdles the cream. So engineers had to find a third gas that is easily pressurized, non-reactive and relatively cheap. Nitrous oxide is the best option.
O2 is a bad, bad idea for a lot of reasons. It’s incredibly volatile (oxygen is literally why stuff burns), it can cause a bunch of adverse effects if you breathe pure oxygen, and it’ll also cause a bunch of undesirable reactions with the dairy parts. Not good.
What about CO2? Well, CO2+H2O=H2CO3 – carbonic acid. There’s a lot of H2O in milk, and in just about all dairy, so this makes the cream acidic. Importantly, we can’t do this with N2O. N2O is a really weird molecule and, importantly, doesn’t react with H2O to form an acid.
Importantly as well, it’s relatively easy to make from already-industrialised, commodity chemicals. Careful heating of Ammonium Nitrate (produced in large quantities as a fertiliser) produces N2O and H2O. The two are easy to separate, making the whole process fairly easy. This makes N2O easy to produce as a product, and fairly cheap – so other options requiring more effort have a disadvantage.
and also nitrogen is the most common gas in our atmosphere, which means you can simply “pluck it from the air” and process it.
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