Some Bite-Sized Learnings

Facts I've picked up at the University of Gastronomic Sciences

I’ve spent more than a few weeks in classes now, ranging from Science in the Kitchen to Parasitic Ontology to Food Psychology. I have half a notebook’s worth of very tiny notes, a list (thanks to classmate Geetika) of 50+ books recommended by professors, and a head full of ideas and concepts and new ways of thinking about food. There’s a lot to sort through, and it comes at us fast.

To give you a sample, here are some bits I’ve learned so far. You may already know some of them, others might be completely new to you, but I think they’re all fascinating. If you want to hear more about any of them, leave a comment and I’ll respond, or maybe write something separate in more detail later.

• Our sense of smell is underrated, not fully understood, and imperative to our sense of place and how we perceive the world. It’s also a sense we can’t control well — the strong smell of perfume, rotten food, or something else can invade our nose without anything stopping it. (Really, take some time to focus on what you smell as you traverse your day. You’ll be surprised.)
  

• Human evolution — specifically the size and power of our brain — really took off when we figured out how to control fire and cook.
  

• While we can’t generate new brain cells — except in some cases when we can make new neurons to store memories — our brain has plasticity and can modify its structure to be strengthened with stimuli, or degraded with no stimuli. In other words, use it or lose it.
  

• We don’t eat in weight or volume, we eat by portion size. As in, if we have a large portion in front of us, whether a bucket of popcorn or a big plate of food or a large piece of cake, we generally eat it all. There are lots of ways to fool our brain - and stomach - into enjoying smaller portion sizes.
  

• We can taste sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, plus we also have a taste receptor for ammonium chloride, which indicates when meat or seafood has spoiled. That same compound flavors salty licorice, a candy many find divisive. Oh, and that “map” of our tongue's taste buds is hogwash.

  

• We learn better when we’re hungry.
  

• The earthy, musky scent of a truffle is mainly from a single chemical compound, which can be recreated from other plants, making the words “natural truffle flavor” either meaningless or unimportant. Also, truffles don’t really have any taste, just a strong aroma.
  

• Flavors we perceive are influenced by the food or container color, shape, and texture. The taste doesn’t actually change, but our perception of the taste does.
  

• An egg white is 90% water, so how can we cook it to be a solid? When it’s heated (or mechanically whipped, or chemically changed with something like alcohol) the proteins are denatured and loosened so they have the ability to capture and hold lots of water molecules in a gel.
  

• Similarly, the jellification process works with flour or other starches heated with oil so they expand and absorb water to thicken gravy or gumbo.
  

• Speaking of pasta, it cooks just fine at a temperature well below the boiling point, but we boil it because it’s an easy visual cooking cue.
  

• Olive oil won’t get hot enough (without breaking down and burning) to get any crispy brown bits on your eggs; you need butter, or animal fat for that.
  

• Butter, a water-in-oil emulsion, is made from cream, an oil-in-water emulsion.
  

• Of the farmland in the world, 83% of it goes directly or indirectly toward meat, dairy, and eggs, and is responsible for about 57% of global emissions, but provides a whopping (activate sarcasm) 37% of the world’s protein and 18% of the world’s calories.
  

• There are 30 types of bananas grown commercially. How many have you seen?
  

• There are about 6,500 different minerals on Earth, and 5,000 of them are created by life, the rest through physical processes of the planet.
  

• A handful of healthy soil contains millions of microflora and microfauna (not to mention many visible creatures) that produce nutrients for other organisms; that tomato you’re eating doesn’t actually produce any vitamins or minerals, it gets them from the soil.
  

• So, when the nutrients have been depleted from the soil, and then the monoculture is “fertilized” with nitrogen and potassium, the resulting fruit or vegetable provides zero nutrition, just carbs and fiber.
  

• So, it’s not just “you are what you eat,” but actually “you are what you eat eats.” And that’s everything to do with the soil.
  

• The biome in the soil, by the way, is so interconnected that it recognizes itself, so when compost or manure returns to where the plant grew or the animal fed, it will perform 10-15% better there than anywhere else.
  

• Which means the collaboration of life is a success story, increasing complexity, and integrating — and creating — more and other life-supporting systems.
  

• Stop eating farmed fish, especially salmon, immediately. Just don’t ever do it.

Let me know what you’d like to hear more about.

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