A Nobel trilogy of flavours

By AlphaZeta (Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

This year's Nobel prize was awarded "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors". This concludes a marvellous trilogy of Nobel prizes which in sum give us a rather complete picture of how it comes that we are able to sense flavours, that is how we can taste and smell.

Let's for now disregard other senses such as hearing, texture and so forth and consider the flavour of something we eat as being mainly a combination of tasting (tongue) and smelling (nose). This is of course simplistic, but still taste and scent are two of the most important senses involved in our perception of food. If we concentrate on these two senses, which are both so-called chemical senses, we can actually invoke three Nobel prizes to illustrate important parts of this sensing process. They are all very elegantly described in both popular and scientific terms, depending on your background or taste, at the web site of the Nobel prize:

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2c - seminar on profile roasting

In this post I summarise the last seminar I attended at the Norwegian Barista Championships this spring. It was hosted by former world champion barista Tim Wendelboe and focussed on coffee roasting. The following is what I understood from this seminar.

Profile roasting, or roasting profile

As a coffee drinker, I find it interesting to get to know the various roasters' profiles, or roasting personalities so to say. I believe each of the four Norwegian roasters I've gotten to know best have their own rather distinct style. The smallest, Madelynn coffee, have a fairly dark roasting profile resulting in more chocolatey and "brown" aromas with less acidity (and perhaps fruitiness) compared to the other "extreme" among the four of Tim Wendelboe. The coffees from Wendelboe seem to me as extremely clean and rich in acidity, but with slender body. Kaffa roasters, on the other hand, are on the lighter side of roasting but with more full-bodied coffees compared to Wendelboe (some of Kaffa's natural/dry processed coffees are among my all time favourites, I must admit). Finally, Solberg & Hansen being by far the largest speciality coffee roaster in Norway, produces such a wide variety of coffees and roasts that the wide variety might be said to constitute their profile, rather than a specific roasting ideal.

Why are some considered food lovers whereas others are considered food geeks?

Often, when I talk about food I'm met with an attitude that I'm talking chemistry and for that reason whatever I say is incomprehensible. The blinds go down and I see the eyes of the person I talk with go all shifty. Probably, he or she considers me being a food geek...

Whereas "food lover" has mostly positive connotations, "food geek" has this mixed flavour to it. Could it be that the "food geek" (whoever that might be) holds some concepts which he applies in considering the food and which sets him apart from the food lover?

One reason that food geeks are considered as, simply geeks, might perhaps find it's reason in what has by pedagogics researchers Meyers & Land (2003, 2005) been coined "threshold concepts". Take any stereotypical notion of a geek, and you'll probably find that one important reason that you consider him a geek is because he holds some knowledge or a world view that lies beyond your grasp (for simplicity I'll use "he" for the geek, but it could of course be a "she" as well. Likewise, I'll use "you" for the non-geek). This could e.g. be a view coloured by mathematical insight (maths/physics geek) or chemical insight (chemistry geek). Often he sees things using his mathematical or chemical spectacles that you normally would consider everyday matters. Accordingly, for many "food geeks" food is not only food but an assembly of plant/animal cells, molecules or even "chemicals" that can be manipulated. The result is a gap between his way of seeing things and your way of seeing things, in this case food and cooking; he becomes the geek.

Dancing the structure of a molecule + scent vs music revisited

Some time ago I caught a glimpse of a headline about some researchers "dancing their natural science projects", more specifically a biochemist dancing the structure of certain biochemical compounds. I thought the idea was rather far-fetched and didn't give it further thought. After seeing it just recently I find myself being so very wrong... Second part of the post contains a few recent thoughts about a project on scent vs. music.

Have a look at the video below. In the start of the video I didn't see the point, but after a while things started to dawn on me.

Lipids Dance! from Kerstin Wagner on Vimeo.

After watching the video I realised that this did indeed illustrate behaviour of the molecules in question in a very vivid way. I'm of the opinion that one should look for as many possible ways of describing and explaining a phenomenon as possible. If a student tells you they don't understand what you're saying there is seldom any help in repeating the same words one more time. You need to find new words, some other metaphor, another mental representation.

How small are actually the things food is made of?

How small are single plant cells, proteins, sugar molecules? What about those things that spoil our food: bacteria, enzymes? All of them are really small, but when things get this small it is often difficult to grasp that there are huge differences in smallness as well. Below is a tip on how you might get to grips with this.

When dealing with food we talk or read about proteins, carbohydrates, plant cells, enzymes, bacteria and lots of different "really small things". Enzymes react, making fruit brown, proteins and sugars react to give what we perceive as brown coloured and pleasant smelling bread crust. Plant cells absorb or lose water through osmosis to become hydrated or dried, resulting in crunchy or dry/flabby vegetables or fruit. Bacteria and fungi either help us making leavened bread or yogurt, or they spoil our food rendering it unappetizing or even unhealthy.

Usually we talk of these things as macroscopic entities: proteins = eggs, fungi = visible mould on old bread, carbohydrates = sugar in the sugar cup. However, some times these are referred to in terms of their microscopic properties, and this is among the challenges when teaching about food (many of these things are actually submicroscopic, but in educational context we commonly refer to this as the "micro level").

The concept of "smallness"

During my time of teaching, I've realised that many people in general have not reflected on several aspects of this feature:

1. there is indeed a microscopic world behind the macroscopic sensible/tangible world, and the latter is often a reflection of the former (after all, eggs are cooked because protein molecules react in certain ways)
2. there are huge differences in actual size between these things which we commonly just think of as "really small"