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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."
This is good because eventually we will all want to have food that is chemically efficient for us to digest, without any of the wrong ingredients, but I question the health side of chemical/altered foods.
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. This same chef was saying how it would be nice if there were alternatives to bad food, that would not jeopardize someone's health. I think that new advancements in science would be the right approach to solving the obesity problem, as long as people are protected from any negative side effects. Natural replacements seem to top this chef's list. He said that the natural foods are the very best for you, so he had little faith in chemicals or engineered food as being healthy for us.
I've stayed away from garbage food for only a short period and lost nearly 40 pounds of flubber! It's really simple, actually. Most people have a small breakfast, a bigger lunch and a huge dinner. I have a huge breakfast, a smaller lunch and a much smaller dinner (before 6pm usually). I eat from each of the four food groups every day.
This one cool salad the chef told me about is:
- Veggies (whatever you want)
- Salt & Pepper (loads of it unless you have a heart condition)
- Squeezed Lemon
The salad tastes like fish & chips with vinegar and salt, so I'm kinda tricking my body into thinking it is getting a load of grease (which all of our bodies crave, because they are stupid bags of carbon and mostly water -- and we all know how well oil and water gets along, don't we?).I stay away from oils because they can ruin your whole system, and I think they reinforce our current fatty deposits, by feeding it somehow (it's not that much of a mystery). Once a week I have fat with meat, because the chef said that new fat kills old fat. New fat apparently replaces old fat, and then doesn't congreal as quickly if it's in turn replaced a week later. That doesn't mean overdo it... just a little will do. Apparently people who have been overweight for a long time have very dense fat that must be replaced in order for them to empty fatty deposits eventually.
My portions are smaller, and I'm not always hungry. I drink as much water as I can every day too, and it helps. I drink tea & coffee, and smoke regularly. I might not be the picture of health, but I am trying.
Now if we could only get some fat and tar eating nanoprobes... then we'd really be in business.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Does this mean we might actually get some good new spices, once they start playing around with modifying existing ones somewhat gastronomically scientifically?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Hah! I can make sandwiches that are edible RIGHT NOW!
I better put that in my resume... brb.
NASA is preparing sandwiches which will still be inedible after seven years. And they borrowed this technology from my local high school. They should coat the shuttle with these monstrosities.
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.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
this is obviously based on failed experiments by the airlines.
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.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
But Fry got parasites that made him a superman...
Damn cartoon mixed-messages! Be consistent!
Roland Piquepaille with Herbed Tomato Sauce
INGREDIENTS:
250 pounds Roland Piquepaille
1 cup article excerpts
1/8 teaspoon finely chopped original contributions.
1 primidi.com blog
1 popular techie website
PREPARATION:
Wash Roland Piquepaille; pat dry. Season with 1 cup copy pasted excerpts from article. Mix in 1/8th teaspoon finely chopped original comments. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven and cook until evenly brown. Link to blog and submit to popular techie website.
Best served hot. Serves ~90,000.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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.
What a rediculous statement. It's fine to eat something unhealthy every once in awhile as long as you don't make a habit of it. Eating well 28 days a month will render whatever you do the remaining 2 or 3 days pretty much irrelevant. Avoiding being stabbed 28 days won't help you to much if you are getting stabbed 2 or 3 days a month.
If your buddy really felt that he was getting paid to kill people, he would quit so obviously he himself realizes his statement is rediculous.
This same chef was saying how it would be nice if there were alternatives to bad food, that would not jeopardize someone's health.
There are. They are called vegetables. Again, you eat plenty of vegies and you can get away with eating all sorts of nasty stuff occasionally.
Your theories on fat murdering other fat are interesting to say the least. You might want to pick up a copy of Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill by Udo Erasmus for a slightly more scientific explanation of how fats operate inside your body.
When I go out to eat, I don't worry about how healthy the food is and my cholesterol numbers kick holy ass. How do I do it? Because I don't go out to eat very much and when I eat at home I'm very, very healthy. There's no need for genetically engineered superfoods. Just eat right 95% of the time and live a little the reminaing 5%.
GMD
watch this
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
Abandon the idea that baby food is somehow necessary for adult health (let alone the baby food of another species). That solves the price of milk problem.
.tracts of land, but have nothing to do with producing enough tomatoes for yourself, by yourself.
Start growing your own "Heritage" food. See the book "Sailing the Farm" for how this can be done on even a small sailboat, a living space far smaller and disadvantaged than even a metropolitan studio apartment. There are tons of newer books on container gardening.
If you've got even as little as 16 square feet of dirt, see the book "Square Foot Gardening."
You might well be surprised at how much you can produce from how little, all without using any of the modern industrial farming techniques.
It's a matter of scale. The modern industrial approach to farming may be needed to generate the largest profit (not food, profit) from huuuuuuge. .
KFG
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.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I worked at a convenience store when I was younger - on one of the shelves we discovered a twinkee that was 6 years old. Still wrapped in plastic, the thing was as hard as a rock (literally.)
We threw it as hard as we could at the arborite countertop. The arborite chipped, but the twinkee was unscathed.
We hit it with a hammer. Repeatedly. It wouldn't break.
We debated selling them to the military as a new armor-piercing shell.