Molecular Gastronomy, The Science of Cooking

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Art of Cooking is evolving fast in this 21st century. New food products are being designed with the help of molecular technology, genetic discoveries or space research before arriving in our kitchens. For example, here is a Pravda article which says that NASA is preparing sandwiches which will still be edible after seven years. Companies like Kraft are also using nanotechnology to create food products tailored to users' needs. This is a booming market and, according to Associated Press, dozens of universities in the U.S. are offering degrees in culinology, attracting creative students in their food and science programs."

Comments

Re:More solutions

[FiReaNGeL]

You can't "solve" the world's food problem. You give humanity more food, you get more humans. And these supplementary humans need more food.

Designing food is not cooking

[MKalus]

Seriously.

I wouldn't call what Kraft & Co are spitting out 'cooking'.

It is a designer meal replacement that resembles cooked food.

Maybe I am old fashined, but anything that gets made in huge vats by machines and then packaged in plastic may be something that keeps me alive, but it DEFINETLY is not cooked.

Re:Designing food is not cooking

[Red Flayer]

Just look at Velveeta, for example (a Kraft trademark).

Velveeta was originally "invented" by a researcher at Rutgers College of Pharmacy. The research was attempting to find a good formula for a skin product that could be used for drug delivery.

Turns out, what is good for drug delivery is also good for coloring and flavorant delivery. A couple phone calls by an astute professor with a cheese fetish, and Kraft gives us Velveeta.

Re:Designing food is not cooking

[dbhankins]

The grapes you eat are only sour because you bought ones that were picked before they were ripe. This is typical in chain supermarkets, where most of the fruit is picked before it's ripe. That way it can be shipped cross-country (or inter-country) without spoilage.

I've had ripe grapes from a roadside stand, and I can tell you there's little that's sweeter - or more delicious.

The same goes double for strawberries.

Science gone amuck again

[John Seminal]

I don't want science genetically engineering my food, I don't want them making meals that can be served 7 years later. I don't want the cancer or other diseases that come with it.

The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?

I now see in my grocery store "organic milk", it is priced twice as expensive as the gallon of regular milk. The same thing is in produce, they have organic vegitables. What is this? 20 years ago everything was organic, now only the rich can get normal food. The rest of us must eat crap that has been genetically modified.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[technoextreme]

The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?

Errrr... Errr.... Err... Err... We have been mucking up our food sources for thousands of years. It's just been in differnt ways. We created all farm animals today.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[cortana]

> How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?

We can not support 6.5 billion people using traditional faming methods. By 2020 we will have to support 8 billion...

Re:Science gone amuck again

[circletimessquare]

I don't want science genetically engineering my food, I don't want them making meals that can be served 7 years later. I don't want the cancer or other diseases that come with it.

you don't get cancer from genetically engineered food. to think so betrays a profound lack of education about the slightest bit of what you are talking about

The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?

actually agriculture is nothing but selecting food crops based on various genetic qualities. we've been genetically engineering foods for tens of thousands of years. there is absolutely nothing natural about an ear of corn or a grain of rice or a shaft of wheat or a potato. they are freakishly huge by natural standards. were these plants released in the wild, they would quicky perish. your "organic" foodstuffs are wholly human creations, and are utterly, in every sense of the word, genetically modified freaks of nature.

just like dogs. do you love your dog? you're dog is a genetically modified wolf, warped by mankind into something wholly unnatural.

I now see in my grocery store "organic milk", it is priced twice as expensive as the gallon of regular milk. The same thing is in produce, they have organic vegitables. What is this? 20 years ago everything was organic, now only the rich can get normal food. The rest of us must eat crap that has been genetically modified.

i assume you live in the west. you are already fabulously rich by world standards. and you are correct: genetically modified foods, that grow in the desert or have vitamin a genes inserted into them, can save thousands of poor people from blindness and starvation.

but silly me, the hysterical worries of an uneduated propagandized western child is more important than any of that.

people talk about frankenfoods all the time as a threat to us.

and i think that is a fitting allegory.

because if you recall from the story of frankenstein, the hysterical uneducated ignorant peasants were out to burn a creature that only wanted to help them.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[Anonymous Coward]

From your comments, I'm guessing you probably work in marketing at some major genetic engineering company.

The difference between modernized crops and GMOs is absolutely huge. To say that there's no difference between them in terms of techniques demonstrates a complete lack of education on your part. Controlled breeding is what was used to obtain modern strains of corn, potato, cats, etc, etc. Genetically modified foods are altered at the DNA level by splicing genes together, and not necessarily from two organisms that could ever breed. For example, some GMO vegetables contain fish genes. The effects of such strange gene cocktails upon human physiology and the ecosystem are still unknown. We are unknowingly participating in a grand experiment, and we the public are serving as the lab rats.

Both you and the corporations that produce these strange organisms talk about helping the poor, saving the world from starvation, blah blah blah. When was the last time a major genetic engineering project was directed at helping starving people? Golden Rice completely failed, as the beta-carotine produced in the rice was in a form that humans couldn't absorb. The truth of the matter is, GMOs are about power. That DNA you spliced together is now your intellectual property, and if some of your pollen gets accidentally carried to another field, that farmer has to pay for using your invention. Think I'm crazy? Look it up. There are plenty examples of large bio-tech companies suing small farming operations for this very reason. And just like the RIAA, you don't really own that information, you just license it. Combine that with a terminator gene to keep the crops from self-replicating, and you now have a farm that is forced to operate by the terms of the bio-tech company.

As for modern diseases, didn't you notice that the sudden surge in food allergies occured shortly after most of our food supply shifted to GMO strains? Don't you wonder why, for the first time in history, so many people have trouble simply eating normal food?

People say that no company would be that evil, no company would knowingly experiment on the public and the ecosystem, no company would be so careless with such dangerous technology. Monsanto, which is one of the biggest such companies, has a long history of doing such things. There are old declassified government documents showing Monsanto administered doses of uranium to low-income expecting mothers, telling them it was a new "vitamin supplement" they were testing. They wanted to see what it would do to the child. Several people I know have quit working at that company over moral objections alone.

So please, take your head out of the sand and stop telling everyone who disagrees with the status quo that they are ignorant savages. Clearly you are as severely lacking in information as you accuse others to be.

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[John Seminal]

I was talking to a chef about a month ago who was complaining about having to put loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo in foods to achieve the taste that the consumer wants, at the expense of their health. "We're paid to kill people," was his complaint, and sadly I think he's right.

The French eat more oil and fat than Americans, but the French have less than half the heart disease. Why is that? Could it be the fat is not as bad as the stress Americans have? The French get two hours for lunch. Many stores close their doors during the lunch time so they can go to cafe's, sit down with friends, and enjoy life. They also get government to gaurentee 5 weeks of vacation a year no matter what the job. That means the janitor gets 5 paid weeks of vacation, just like his boss.

And if you will eat fat, how about eating healthy fat? Eat butter instead of margirine. Eat natural olive oil instead of processed oils. The problem is not fat, the problem is companies like McDonalds, to save a few pennies, are using crappy oils that are manufactured and not natural. Plus, we only have 30 minutes to make it from the office, to the fast food joint, and back to the office again. Hope there is enough time to push the sandwich down the throat with one hand while honking the horn to get the asshole in front of us out of the way with the other hand.

And then, just as lunch is over, I am back at my desk with my heart pumping and head dripping of sweat, just in time to make some sales calls. God, I hope I don't get any more bitch secretaries to screen calls for their bosses.

What will kill people is all the new manufactured foods, that are filled with chemicals our bodies can't expell. They will fill cells with toxic substances that will cause cancer.

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[fossa]

Hm. The right approach to solving the obesity problem is: exercise. Ever been to Spain or France? I have not, but everyone I know who has notices the distinct lack of obese people, unlike the United States. Cities in Spain and France tend to be more walkable. It is common to walk everywhere, occasionally taking a train. Every place I have lived in the United States, it is common to drive everywhere.

As for natural foods being superior to processed foods, that seems like a no brainer. Humans evolved to digest natural foods because processed foods weren't around. This doesn't necessarily mean better foods could not be engineered, but most processed foods seem to be engineered for shelf life and looks, not health.

As for craving "bad" foods: Have you ever been in really good shape? I have a couple times (well, I guess that's subjective. I could run for about an hour every day, do a 12 miler at 7-7:30 min/mile pace, which is about the best shape I've ever been in). The funny thing about being in shape is that I actually crave "healthy" foods. Give me a salad loaded with a variety of veggies. Give me whole grains. I completely dropped soda, preferring water instead. The thought of McDonalds made me sick. Needless to say, I felt a whole lot better too. Again, humans evolved to be more active than a desk job allows. (I don't really get this feeling doing only the shorter less frequent workouts I squeeze into my day. It's quite frustrating; it takes a lot of dedication to get in shape and stay there.)

On Food and Cooking

[espressojim]

So, someone's finally gotten around to reading all of Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking the science and lore of the kitchen".

This is a book about food stuffs through history, and their chemical and physical reactions to different processes used in cooking. The book has ~70 pages on milk, about about ~60-70 pages on eggs alone.

You get a chance to understand how your food works, at the molecular level. You can read about what protiens are in eggs, and how they change due to heat, acidity, etc. How whipped cream supports air, and how the fat molecules wrap around air (including pictures with a scanning electron microscope!)

Good stuff for cooks, and very much the science of cooking.

However, this book was originally written 20 years ago, so this isn't as new as it's played out to be...Now Pravda is just supplementing the story with a bit of 'wouldn't it be cool if we used technology to make things better?'

*don't* kick it up a notch!

[beacher]

disclaimer- My wife's a chef at a 5-diamond restaurent and she spices her food appropriately and everything rocks. I think that us americans over spice and generally go crazy with trying to add too much flavor. Lighten up a bit on the spice ( here comes the "lips acquire stains" jokes) and try detecting subtle flavors or better combinations.
I don't know why people insist on nuking foods with cayenne or pouring texas pete on everything.
-B

Re:*don't* kick it up a notch!

[espressojim]

Interesting. I've seen many chefs say that americans are too tentitive with their spicing, and seem to *under* spice much of their food.

Of course, 'texas pete' is not a spice or herb. It's some crappy added on hot sauce, that you use to obliterate the taste of bland food.

Try indian, or thai, or chinese, or japanese, or korean (etc, etc,etc) and you can have plenty of spice, and it taste great.

I may not be a chef, but my friends prefer my home cooked meals to resteraunts in town (and I live in Boston - we're no slouch when it comes to resturaunts.) So, I have at least a little clue what I'm talking about. (On the other hand, I'd love to have access to a professional chef to talk to about technique occasionally...)

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[badmammajamma]

This is true. The French not only have less heart disease they also have far less obesity.

The reason for this has been explained in many ways including the use of oils not containing transfats, drinking wine, and more exercise. Personally, I think all of that has something to do with it. However, I think it's mostly that people in the US simply eat too damn much. We're fucking gluttons.

I started watching what I eat from the perspective of quantity only. I made almost no changes as far as what kinds of foods I eat. Simply reducing my food intake to eating only when I'm hungry has resulted in a loss of 7 lbs. in two months. Now, you might say 7 lb.s in two months is weak but you have to remember that it took me a LONG time to put on weight. The nice thing about this is I don't feel like I'm sacrificing jack shit. I can still eat shit foods if I want, I just don't eat tons of food anymore.

At the end of the day it's all about calories consumed vs. calories burned. If the consumed > burned, you get heavy. Either consume less or or burn more (or both) to correct the problem.

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[Hurricane78]

> Atkins works as it thows your body into ketosis, vegan works as you have almost zero fat intake, simply being active, eating healthy and lowering your calorie intake works the best in the long run.

Atkins and vegan diets kill you for the very same reason that unhealty food does: it's unhealty!

I had many many different diets, and i can tell you that the whole concept of a "diet" is a huge load of crap!

Do you know what it takes to bekome healty and thin?

1. Eat only when you're really hungry! not when you just want to eat now. (to force you to a normal eating behaviour. try taping a "H?" above your fridge to remember yourself.)
2. Eat in smaller amounts and more often (to get your stomach to a normal size again and to not fall into a ravenous appetite).
3. Move your ass and do some sport.
4. And most important: never ever stop doing point 1-3 for the rest of your life!

That's really all you have to do. Nothing more... But as with all addictions, it depents on your willpower to do it. (Tip: A psychologist can help you more than you may think with that problem.)

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[rolfwind]

As someone who lives both in Germany and USA I notice the same things.

Not just a lack of obese people but that the obese people there would merely be called chubby here.

But it's not just the cities - but the rural areas where the driving everywhere problem is much worse - Germany has bike paths/sidewalks everywhere. And not bike paths/trails where you have to drive to likely to be right by your front door. And the bikepaths/sidewalks often follow the major roads out of town. A lot of the farmer's fields also let you drive through without problem which helps a lot.

But the motivation of biking it is because you can get your shopping/errands done that way - stores tend to be close by and clumped together - you can get to the post office/groceries/etcetera w/o driving all over town.

The cause of this is the zoning - Europe tends to let shopowners live above their shops on the second floor - while American townships tends to keep residential and commercial strictly seperate.

This is may be the leading cause why America tends to have so many super-centers for everything and so few modest size supermarkets (think Aldi as the normal size of a supermarket in Europe.) Mom and Pop shopkeepers can't save the overhead of having just one place to do both business and living. Not to mention saving the bother to drive there.e

Of course, Europe is adopting American style thing in many areas and so is getting American style problems (associated with super-centers and obesity).

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[shawb]

A couple of things wrong with your point:

Acrylamide is not PUT into French Fries. It is the result of heating up starches. So, french fries will have them, so will pasta and bread and cookies and pretzels and any starchy cooked food. French fries WILL have more of them, however, because of the higher temperature they are cooked at.

Artificial sweeteners are indeed bad for you, but it's pretty much a wash between them and sugar laden soda, so yeah. I should reach for a glass of water, or at least unsweetened green tea.

It has been shown that dietary aluminum does not cause alzheimers, but that alzheimers leads to a buildup of aluminum in the brain.

And free radicals aren't really something that you ingest, it's something that comes about naturally from our metabolism. The problem with our current diet is that it lacks the antioxidants necessary to counteract them. Guar gum in sour cream: guar gum is not bad for you. It is a naturally occuring gum, originally derived from the bean of the guar tree. Gums are simply fiber. Much healthier way of thickening food than butter and flour, actually. Just difficult to use in a kitchen situation.

Yes, foods that are overprocessed in the American fast food/snack style ARE bad for you. No doubt bleached white flour with all the nutrition taken out mixed with sugar and shortening is not good for you. We need more veggies in the diet (in fact the Atkin's diet which most people lambast as being just bacon and lard is higher in leafy, brightly colored veggies (bright ciolors meaning more vitamins and antioxidants) than the diets of anybody I personally know... even vegetarians. But it is low in some fruits)

But your grandfather living to 104 is not proof that our diet is killing us. The average life expectancy is much lower for someone born in 1900 than someone being born in the 1950s or right now. It is also much rarer to see people starving on the street. In fact obesity is a much bigger problem than undernourishment (malnourishment is a different thing completely, and spicy hot cheetos and soda are definately not healthy.)

But yeah, we do need more veggies in our life. But what we really need is more time to properly enjoy our food so we don't need the huge blast of sweet fatty flavor to think we are satisfied. Enough time to be able to cook a meal and sit down and enjoy it once in a while. Enough time to eat slowly so that our body can tell our brain it's full. Enough time to just be, so that we're not totally stressed out from work day in and day out.

Hmm... odd thing about French people being healthier... one thing that they do which every American health institution says is unhealthy is smoke like chimneys (I don't have statistics, but at least that's the stereotype)

I strongly feel that it is not so much what we are putting in our bodies that is bad for us, but what we are NOT putting in our bodies that might eventually bring our life expectancy down.

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[hoxford]

Have you ever heard of carcinogens? How about Acrylamide? What is Acrylamide? It is just a chemical that food manufacturors put in French Fries and Chips.

*Put* in French Fries and Chips? Do you have the slightest clue about what you're speaking of? Acrylamide is a chemical contaminant in food caused by a chemical reaction that occurs when foods are fried, deep-fried or oven-baked.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fsrio/topics/tpacrylamide. htm

It's due to the cooking process, not something that's added.

Speaking of mental slowdowns, do you know where it comes from? Aluminum in the diet. Where does the Aluminum come from? From all the machines that process food.

Cite, please? Show me an actual study where this correlation is indicated? Hell, show me a study where any significant aluminum is introduced into food through processing.

Processed foods do cause cancer. Why is it that 30 years ago most Ice Creams were made from milk and sugar, and a flavoring like vanilla beans or chocolate, but today they are made with an ingredient list of 20 chemicals?

Huh? So ice cream makers are part of a huge conspiracy with the health care/military industrial complex trying to spread cancer to everyone to generate huge profits?

Why is it that 70 years ago airplanes were made with wood and fabric but today they're made with plastics and composites? Because materials science has advanced and it makes a stronger, longer lasting product.

The sad part is that I mostly agree with what you're trying (badly) to say. Too many foods have all the nutrition processed out of them for purposes of extending shelflife and allowing the use of cheaper materials. But making crap up and spewing pseudo-science and voodoo doesn't help.

Re:loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo

[mmontour]

What is Acrylamide? It is just a chemical that food manufacturors put in French Fries and Chips.

It's not something that anyone "puts in" fries. It's a substance that forms during the high-temperature cooking process. From your link:

  Acrylamide forms as a result of unknown chemical reactions during high-temperature baking or frying. Raw or even boiled potatoes test negative for the chemical.

-----

Think about it, not just foods but all chemicals.[...]

Here are some chemicals:
  - Adenosine triphosphate
  - Ammonium perfluorooctanoate
  - Cyanocobalamin
  - Oxalocacetic acid
  - Oxalic acid
  - Potassium sorbate
  - Pyruvic acid
  - Xanthophyll
  - Xylene

Many of these are found in all-natural foods like fresh fruit and vegetables. Some of these chemicals are essential for life, while others are harmful. It is not useful to group them together under an "all chemicals" label and then conclude that they must therefore be bad for you.