The Science of Food

Silicon Valley And The Reinvention Of Food

Fake meats have been around for years, but a new crop of Bay Area startups backed by tech investors think they can make meat substitutes good enough to compete with the real deal. Beyond Meat — backed by Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone via their company Obvious Corp — created an eerily accurate chicken substitute, for example.

But the most ambitious project is Rob Rhinehart‘s cheekily named “Soylent,” an attempt to replace food entirely with a liquid shake that has all the protein, fat, carbohydrates and micronutrients you need. [MORE]

Bill Gates: Food Is Ripe for Innovation

The global population is on track to reach 9 billion by 2050. What are all those people going to eat? With billions of people adding more animal protein to their diets — meat consumption is expected to double by 2050 — it seems clear that arable land for raising livestock won’t be able to keep up. "That’s one reason why I’m excited about innovations taking place now in food production, which especially interests me as someone who worries about the poor getting enough to eat." Food scientists are developing plant-based alternatives to meat that are produced more sustainably.[MORE]

Impatient Futurist The Bright, Hi-Tech Future of Food Preservation

Discover Magazine 2011.
Irradiating food? Pssh. Old news. Engineers are working on more effective (and cooler) techniques like super-high pressure, chemical coatings, and, yes, laser ovens. [LINK]

How Science Measures Food: Cheese Stretchiness, Radiation in Bananas, and More

Taste is a highly subjective thing. But when science gets involved, things have to be measured, and the measurements must be exact.Here are 11 ways that food is precisely measured. Bitterness can be determined based on a specific scale, and the amount of sucrose in a solution can be easily calculated. Some others are a little more esoteric: stretching cheese to measure its texture; determining the color of a beer based on how much light passes through it; testing the strength of coffee.

Check out the gallery for the full collection

Is 'pink slime' being unfairly demonised?

"Pink slime" may be off the menu for many US school children after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which provides a fifth of school meals in the US through its National School Lunch Program, yielded to a petition demanding the withdrawal of the meat product from the school menu.
However, the beef industry, the company that makes the product and campaigners against food contamination have fiercely defended the safety and value of the product, officially called "lean finely textured beef" (LFTB).
So what's going on? What is "pink slime", and is it being unfairly demonised? [MORE]

Vegetarian Cutlet: New Method to Prepare a Meat Substitute

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2012) — It looks like a cutlet, it's juicy and fibrous like a cutlet, and it even chews with the consistency of a real cutlet -- but the ingredients are 100 percent vegetable. Researchers are using a new method to prepare a meat substitute that not only tastes good, but is also environmentally sustainable.

Meat production is complicated, costly and not eco-friendly: fatted animals have to consume five to eight kilos of grain just to generate one kilogram of meat. It would be simpler and more sustainable if one were to make cutlets out of seed -- without the detour through the animal's body. Impossible? Not entirely...{MORE}

Who Invented the Oreo? The Unsung Heroes of Cookie Design

The Oreo. "Ubiquitous, overlooked, and yet embodying the highest design standards in both form and function—are worthy of recognition as "humble" masterpieces." Compared to its lesser and now former competitor, the Hydrox cookie, the design "is the more American-looking of the two -- its even pattern, however dowdy, has an industrial, stamped-out quality. It might be said to combine homelike decoration with an American love of machine imagery, and in that combination lies a triumph of design." {MORE}

From supernova to supermarket: How NASA food science can benefit consumers

Lessons learned improving the quality and nutritional content of food for astronauts could open up opportunities for the food industry back here on earth, says Dr Michele Perchonok, manager of NASA's shuttle food system and advanced food technology project.

In this exclusive interview, Dr Perchonok explained that the food system will have to evolve if we are to successfully send humans to the planet Mars. [MORE]

Developing the NASA Food System for Long-Duration Missions. 2011. Maya Cooper, Grace Douglas, and Michele Perchonok Journal of Food Science March 2011 [Download article]

 

Freakonomics Radio: Waiter, There’s a Physicist In My Soup

In the first segment of a two-parter about food and food science; it’s also about why we eat what we eat, and how that may change in the future. The first episode takes a look at the “molecular gastronomy” movement, which gets a big bump in visibility next month with the publication of a mammoth cookbook called Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Its principal author is Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft who now runs an invention company called Intellectual Ventures.

In Part 2, we get out of the kitchen and take a broader look at the past, present and future of food science. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the link in box at right or read the transcript here.) First, we hear from John Floros, a food scientist at Penn State who co-authored a paper on the history of food science. (Special thanks on this episode go to the Institute for Food Technology.) He explains why we have Napoleon Bonaparte to thank for canned food. He also explains why anyone who’s alive today might want to thank a food scientist.

Cornucopia - Prototypes and Concept Designs for a Digital Gastronomy

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

This and other "Digital Gastronomy" prototypes HERE 

More on food printing from BBC