Future Food

I just stumbled upon the show Future Food on the Planet Green network. The show is hosted by two chefs in Chicago who have made a name for themselves in the culinary world for their molecular mischievousness. They playfully prepare familiar dishes out of unlikely ingredients using hi-tech equipment then see how people react to their 21st century edible concoctions. Each episode poses a unique challenge: how to turn a granola bar into French fries, prepare a burger out of the stuff a cow eats rather than the cow.

If you don't follow the celebrity chef scene, read food magazines or watch competitive cooking shows like Iron Chef (ie. live in a cave), you may not be familiar with the concept of 'molecular gastronomy.' It's basically the marriage of chemistry lab and home ec class. Chefs and amateur cooks who practice molecular gastronomy employ tricks, tools and chemicals used by scientists to refine recipes and prepare novel tastes and textures.

My scientific side thinks: "How cool! I'd love to try that." But then the Luddite in me protests: "The centrifuge is not a kitchen appliance." My mom was a great cook. She was able to whip up delicious meals with a whisk, Cuisinart and conventional oven. And since I bought a Vitamix (aka. blender on steroids), I am pretty satisfied with the equipment in my own kitchen.

Is molecular gastronomy really the future of food? I think not. While physics, chemistry and biology play an important role in cooking, most good chefs are inspired by heart & soul and don't need sodium alginate, guar gum or calcium lactate to create a magnificent meal. It is also very unlikely that many restauranteurs will invest in thousands of dollars worth of lab equipment to please their critics.

What bugs me most about this particular "cooking" show is how the chefs wax poetic about the potential their experiments have to change the food landscape and people's eating habits. First of all, some of the stuff they invent is so contrived that there really is no point of recreating it. And secondly, not all the stuff that's supposed to be better for you really is. And the folks who try their food are not representatative of the general public. They take the positive feedback as an indication that they are creating the food of the future, when they're really not.

In the "Junk Food" episode, they challenge themselves to create familiar junk foods, such as French Fries and chocolate cake, out of granola bars and a green smoothie (while they removed the labels, it was obvious from the plastic bottle that it was an Odwalla "Superfood" smoothie). I'm sorry guys, but putting the green drink through the centrifuge to remove the solid portion eliminates all the beneficial fiber and likely degrades whatever nutrients remain in the liquid.

Freeze-drying a whole grain granola bar so that you can grind it into a flour-like substance is also a misleading way to "cook" healthfully. Yeah, whole grains contain fiber but that doesn't negate the fact that they are a rich source of carbohydrates. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition concluded that particle size exerted the greatest affect on insulin response when various grain product were fed to subjects. While the whole wheat flour offered some fiber and trace amounts of nutrients, it was no safer for blood sugar regulation than the refined white type. So no, you can't necessarily "have your cake and eat it too."

I am not of the mindset that engineering familiar foods to be healthier by fortifying them with healthy ingredients (or removing undesirable things like sugar & salt) is going to save the nation. This approach just misleads people. We should stop telling diabetics that it's OK to eat sweets as long as they are sugar-free or made with whole grain. Trans-fat oil bans have erected a health halo over restaurants that serve greasy, smelling fried foods of inferior quality.

The prescription for health & disease prevention is pretty simple: Eat the freakin' health food!