After our experiment in class, I began thinking about gastronomy and the importance of both taste and presentation in fine dining. In class, we concurred that the green beans cooked in basic water had a bright green color that made the vegetable appear fresher and perfectly cooked. The beans cooked in acidic water, however, took on a dull dark green color reminiscent of canned or overcooked beans. These colors impacted my judgments on which bean to taste first; I chose the brighter ones because they appeared fresher and not overcooked, but they ended up tasting like baking soda instead of like green beans. The duller beans, however, were pleasantly crunchy and had a fresher texture. I wondered how chefs might be able to combine the fresher taste and colors, which led me to the following PBS article on synthetic foods, taste, and molecular gastronomy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/synthetic-food-better-cooking-through-chemistry/
The author interviews chemist and chef Hervé This, who prepares the taste in his food through the chemical that holds that flavor, rather than from the ingredient. This is why the trend is called “note-by-note”—because each note of flavor is combined to create the same natural tastes, just synthetically. Thus, a chef or gastronomist is able to bring out or enhance certain flavors more than others (like umami or sweet). This hopes that this kind of chemical construction of foods could potentially serve to replace food distribution.
Still, this trend solution would encounter a lot of public resistance, and presents similar issues to GMO versus Organic fruits and vegetables. It would take a long time for the average consumer to accept chemically made food over traditionally grown foods. While the average consumer might not like that a certain strain of apple was created in a laboratory rather than in an orchard, they will still be consuming an apple that is molecularly the same.
This’s solution takes it one step further, from an ingredient to just a chemical compound with a taste function. Over time, all food would be synthetically produced, removing the need for farms, crops, and the entire agricultural industry. It is very interesting to see how new technologies in chemistry can directly inform what we eat and what we put in our bodies, and thus what our own bodies’ chemical properties may change or remain.