The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

On March 28, 2013 we held an edition of the Planetary Sculpture Supper Club in Pittsburgh, PA.

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy worked in collaboration with The Center for PostNatural History & PostNatural Art Studio at Carnegie Mellon University. Students from the studio designed and prepared dishes. What follows are some of the stories and foods that were shared.

Final menu:

apéritif
Three Milks: Alive, Dead & Resurrected

tasting flight
A Selection of Five Sugars

amuse bouche
Invisible: Root Vegetable Stew with Waxworm Roux
on Waxworm Fritter
Imposter: Lumpia “Wax Moth” atop a Honey-Chile Sauce
Immaculate: Waxworm Soft Shell Taco with Chile Marrón

main
Producer: Seaweed Salad
Primary Consumer: Boiled Shrimp Tossed in an Old Bay Blend
Secondary Consumer: Pan-Fried Catfish
Secondary Consumer: Seared Lemon-Pepper Pike
Tertiary Consumer: Blackened Alligator in a Citrus Honey Sauce

digestif
Frackfluid & Baileys

dessert
Lemon Curd, Avacado & Sour Cream Tartlet
Served with a Miracle Berry

A Word on Planetary Sculpture: Eaters as Agents of Selection

The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club is a collection of foods, recipes and stories that typify some of the ways humans unconsciously sculpt the planet’s biosphere through eating habits, flavour preferences and food technologies. We hope this semi-regular Supper Club is an opportunity to explore the co-evolution of gastronomy and larger ecological, technological and political systems.

Animal and plant breeders have steered evolution for thousands of years. However, eaters and chefs ALSO exert selection pressures on the kinds of life forms and ingredients that are propagated within the eco-agro-culinary system.Every human eater slowly reformulates the planet as they consume it.

The daily choices we make about what to eat for dinner, whether it’s a Big Mac meal or a homegrown salad, impacts the diversity, abundance and distribution of life on the planet. Every time a food-secure eater chooses to eat one kind of food over another they make a small, downstream, but not insignificant selection pressure that privileges certain genomes to propagate on the planet. You, as an eater, are an agent
of selection.

With a dramatic increase in the human population over the last century, and an increasing amount of land and planetary biomass dedicated to the human food system, human eaters are some of the most powerful forces of planetary sculpture.
WITHIN OUR GLOBAL CIVILIZATION AND GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM, EATERS ARE AGENTS OF SELECTION. THE GENES, GENOMES AND INGREDIENTS THAT ARE PROPAGATED ARE THE ONES YOU PREFER TO EAT.

 – Center for Genomic Gastronomy

apertif
Three Milks: alive, dead & resurrected
by Natalya Pinchuk and Dana Sperry

For this aperitif course, we present to you a tasting of milk in three distinct forms—raw without any processing as it comes from the cow, lifeless and reconstituted from freeze dried powder, and dead milk resurrected with kefir grains of bacteria and yeasts. Milk is at the center of many cultural narratives and myths, ideological arguments, commercial interests, scientific debates, and health fads. Who would have thought milk to be so complicated?

The first two samplings speak for opposing agricultural and economic systems. The raw milk represents the idyllic local small farm with happy cows grazing in beautiful pastures, serving the needs of individuals’ gut microflora nearby. The powdered milk comes to us from the industrial food complex with an abundance of ethical and environmental problems, yet it allows for long term storage and ease of transportation across large distances, especially useful in moments of crisis.  One nourishes the holistic body, the other addresses the logistics of feeding large populations. We offer the third cup as a possibility for addressing both. Please taste and contemplate these worldviews.

alive
Whole Raw Cow’s Milk

Sourced from Swiss Villa, Wrightsville, PA Labeled as 100% grass fed, no grain, no soy, no corn. “Raw Milk is known to contain harmful bacteria and may cause food borne illness. These bacteria can seriously affect the health of anyone who drinks raw milk, however they are particularly dangerous to pregnant women, children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.”
– PA Department of Agriculture

dead
Reconstituted Instant Nonfat Dry Milk

Sourced from Shurfine®, WesternFamily Foods, Inc.
Labeled as rich in calcium, fortified with vitamins A&D, no preservatives, pasteurized, extra grade.
ingredients: nonfat dry milk, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3

resurrected
Shurfine® Milk Kefir

Shurfine instant nonfat dry milk and water cultured with kefir grains*
Fermentation by-products: carbon dioxide, ethanol (alcohol)

Tasting Flight
Tip of the Tongue: a selection of five sugars
by Max Hawkins & Melissa Bryan

“What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

But what is sweetness? For most, the definition ends at “tastes like sugar,” but in truth the sensation is more complex. Each sweetness is not Equal. We present a course of five sugars and sugar substitutes in an attempt to expand the definition of sweetness. Through each sweetener’s history we highlight the improbability of its discovery, its unique flavor profile, and the unlikely role that the human tongue played in the development of sugar.

Notes on Tasting

Most sweeteners were discovered on the tip of a scientist’s finger. As a reflection of this process, we invite you to taste each sugar from your fingertips. For the clearest tasting experience, reserve a finger for each sugar. Place the sugar on the tip of your tongue and allow it to move toward the back of your mouth. Cleanse the palate in between tastings with sparkling water.

Amuse Bouche
The Trinity of Entomophagy: invisible : imposter : immaculate
by Rigel Richardson & Lazae LaSpina

We aim to persuade our dinner guests that: The aversion to eating insects is psychological and can be overcome through good experiences; Insect foods can (and should) be delicious; insects are not an exotic ingredient; insects do not need to be prominent and visible as a part of your food.

Taking inspration from the Catholic ideas of Transubstantiation and the Trinity, our dish focuses on the acknowledgement of our food source as once-living organism and aims to knock down a few insect-food myths. Through a playful (and genuinely respectful) ritualized consumption, we follow the Waxworm from its food source (honey) to what would have been its adulthood (the Wax Moth) through three tiny courses.

Invisible Take comfort in comfort food! You can’t see the insects

The first course (pot pie filling with waxworm roux on waxworm fritter) incorporates the insect less apparently, demonstrating that insects do not have to be a visible component of a meal to add to its flavor and/or nutritional content. It also shows that Insects can be incorporated into very ordinary dishes and should not be exclusively a feature
of exotic cuisine.

Ritual Aspect: Anise Hyssop dried leaves to sprinkle on the fritter before consuming. To spiritually cleanse the space/food before eating begins.

Imposter: It’s the same as other foods that crunch and squish

Our second course (vegetarian lumpia) presents an artistic wax moth facsimile that possesses some of the repulsive aspects of whole insects as food sources. Laying in a swirl of chile-honey sauce, the moth’s body, a single lumpia, crunches to reveal a soft center. But these are also natural aspects of many accepted foods (tacos, lumpia, pastries, etc.) and therefore can be overcome psychologically when approaching an insect as food.

Ritual Aspect: Thyme leaves in the honey to smudge onto the lumpia. To invite positive energy and for courage to consume the third course!

Immaculate The insect revealed through its remarkable life cycle. Take it or leave it!

The third course (waxworm tacos) challenges the dinner guest to overcome their fears or hesitations. With at least one good experience and a gentle confrontation with potential aversions out of the way, what lies ahead is one last delicious morsel very obviously featuring waxworms.

Ritual Aspect: Tulsi (Holy Basil) dried leaves to sprinkle on the taco before consuming. To perform a blessing of enlightenment.

Main
Upstream: a sampling of a southern aquatic food chain
by Allison Huey & Nathan Trevino

This course presents a sampling of various organisms from an aquatic food chain of the southeastern plains and southern coastal plains ecoregions of the United States. We chose to include a producer and three different types of consumers, preparing them in ways that reflect their regions of origin.

The samples are plated in a circle, reflecting the cyclical nature of food chains and the transfer of energy throughout. We invite our diners to participate in not only the consuming of these organisms, but also the consideration of our own place within food chains and the ways we alter them for our own personal gain.

A.
Producer
Undaria pinnatifida
Seaweed Salad

B.
Primary Consumer
Litopenaeus setiferus
Boiled shrimp tossed
in an Old Bay blend

C.
Secondary Consumer
Ictalurus furcatus
Pan-fried catfish

D.
Secondary Consumer
Esox niger
Grilled lemon-pepper pike

E.
Tertiary Consumer
Alligator mississippiensis
Blackened alligator in
a citrus honey sauce

Cocktail
Frackfluid & Baileys: exploring the murky layers of hydaulic fracking
by Sarah Anderson & Jess Waldman

The Fracktails water bar combines representations of the basic aspects of the hydraulic fracturing process with some small bit of human enrichment activity. The drink consists of various alcoholic beverages encased in ice. The ice is then permeated with a small drilled hole and carbonated water is pumped inside. The liquors represent the chemicals used in the process, while the carbonated coffee represents the large amounts of water used. The syringe represents the pumping of the fluids into the underground drilled pipeline, to release the gasses leaking from the shale fractures. The bubbles from the carbonated water represent those natural gasses. And the ice structure that surrounds all this represents the contaminated groundwater. The fracking process that the guests get to learn, watch, and do is the human enrichment aspect of the project.

Dessert
Miracle Berry: change the eater, not the food
by Natalya Pinchuk with The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

The last course of the evening highlights one area of emerging research at the Center for Genomic Gastronomy: using novel ingredients to cook the eater and not the food. The use of the miracle berry (Synsepalum dulcificum) is an example of preparing food for consumption by manipulating the eater. The miracle berry contains a glycoprotein called miraculin, that temporarily stimulates sweet taste receptors and masks sour-taste buds, causing the brain to have anomalous food experiences. Once eaters are in an altered state of culinary consciousness, specific meals can be prepared to cause delight and surprise. What other chemical, architectural, biological and psychological interventions can be identified or imagined for human eaters, in order to modify taste?

Miraculin itself has a hotly contested history. The plant is indigenous to West Africa, where it is used to improve the palatability of acidic maize dishes and to sweeten sour beverages. The plant and uses for its fruit were documented by French explorer Chevalier des Marchais in 1725. A failed attempt was made in the 1970s to commercialize the fruit when the US FDA classified the berry as a food additive. It is unclear how lobbying by the U.S. sugar industry effected this decision, because the FDA has refused to release files on the subject. More recently, Japanese scientists have created a genetically stable expression of functional miraculin in transgenic tomato plants.

CREDITS

This Planetary Sculpture Supper Club, Pittsburgh
is presented to you by:
The Center for Genomic Gastronomy
The Center for PostNatural History
Natalya Pinchuk and Dana Sperry

And all the students in the PostNatural Art Studio
at Carnegie Mellon University:
    Allison Huey
    Jess Waldman
    Lazae LaSpina
    Max Hawkins
    Melissa Bryan
    Nathan Trevino
    Rigel Richardson
    Sarah Anderson

Special thanks to Lauren for her patience as we bombarded her kitchen.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

by Emilie  

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy was invited to participate in Portland State University’s Open Engagement Conference during the weekend of May 17th-19^th.  This international conference, centered around social practice, seeks to foster meaningful dialogue about socially and politically engaged art-making practices.  

Zack Denfeld gave a lunchtime lecture about the professional practice he has with Cathrine (Cat) Kramer, The Center for Genomic Gastronomy (CENTGG).  Cat was unable to make the lecture at the last minute , so I got catapulted into the mix.  I am, until I come up with a better, more important sounding faux-title, calling myself (in Steve Zissou-style) Intern #1.  And no, unfortunately, I don’t have a Glock, or even one to share. 

The morning began with purchasing eight pounds of grapefruits from a nearby grocer and stealing packets of artificial sweeteners from the coffee shop (don’t worry, it was corporate).  Following this, there may have been a bend in time, because next thing I know I’m preparing salads for roughly 30 attendees while Zack gives his presentation about CENTGG’s myriad projects.  I, unfortunately, am unable to go into detail about the lecture because I tuned it all out to focus on shredding jicama.  Maybe now I should be called Chef Intern #1.  I prepared two salads, created from ingredients that traveled across continents after the Columbian Exchange.  One salad brings the Old World to the New World, and the reverse for the second.  The basic recipes are listed below. 

Old World to New World

Green kale

English peas

Fresh apricot (chopped)

Roasted rhubarb

Dressing:

Olive oil

Raw, toasted pistachios

Garlic

Lemon juice

Water

New World to Old World

Jicama (shredded)

Red bell pepper

Avocado

Corn (raw, cut off the cob)

Tomato

Cilantro

The Entire Menu for the lunch time talk is as follows:

cocktail
Mutagenic Grapefruit, Jalepeno & Gin

amuse bouche
Doug Fir Tips

cheese
Geitost, Roquefort, Seastack

main
Columbaian Excahange Salad:
New World, Old World

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy
for Open Engagement
May 17, 2013

Thanks to Mack Mcfarland for helping prep at the last minute. Images 1 & 2 by Lexa Walsh, all other images by Jake Richardson. (Intern #2).

CULINARY FORENSICS

In December 2012 the Center for Genomic Gastronomy participated in the Nomadic Science Hack Lab in Prague. We used our time in the lab to prototype methods for reverse engineer spice mixes such as masalas, Speculoos and KFC’s secret spice mix. One of our main inspirations was the lock-picking villages that appear at hacker conferences. We would love to create a similar collaborative/competitive environment for reverse engineering spice mixes.

This lab was our first attempt at Culinary Forensics and we chose to work with spices because they are dry, and easier to separate than other food products. Also, spices are highly fungible. Spices can travel far. The spice trade is worth a lot of money. Spices are essential inputs for industrial food design. For all of these reasons we are researching spices. 

REVERSE ENGINEERING RECIPES

Culinary Forensics can be used to reverse engineer recipes or to identify the makeup of a food product. Even though recipes can not be copyrighted, they are not necessarily set down in writing and published. Sometimes chefs and food hackers just forget to share their research, or run out of time to document their recipes. Other times consumers are sold adulterated food or mislabeled fish. Culinary Forensics can help.

Non-published recipes can be lost when an individual dies or a kitchen closes. However, even in these cases they may leave behind some clues such as a pre-blended spice mix that someone finds. [ 1 ] Some culinary exclusivists have attempted to close access to recipes by intentionally keeping them a secret or by trying to obtain a patent rather than a copyright. [ 2 ] 

Creating an open source Culinary Forensics Kit could be useful in the move towards an open (food) culture. Although there are for-profit food reverse-engineering companies, our goal is to create free and open methods and tools.

image source: Einat Peled

A WORD ON SPICES: GLOBAL VILLAGE, GLOBAL STEW POT: EATING IN THE HOMOGENOCENE 

Spices are traded on a planetary scale. The edible genomes that were propagated globally during the Columbian Exchange (potato, corn,  sweet potato, chili, tomato, tobacco, chocolate) may have had a more disruptive effect on agriculture and political economy, but the global spice trade paved the way. (The book “1493” provides a good summary). Potato, Corn and Sweet Potato spread across the planet because they are agronomically robust genomes that can produce calories and (some) nutrients on marginal and disrupted land.

The global flows of spice that preceded the Columbian Exchange and continue to this day provided something more amorphous: exotic tastes, smells and powerful flavor experiences. Chili, chocolate, cinnamon and nutmeg go straight to our head.

It is amazing to think that until the mid-19th century the Banda Islands were the world’s only source of the spices nutmeg and mace, produced from the nutmeg tree. [ 3 ] These spices are now accessible in any urban market on the planet and  “It could be argued that the world—at least, that part of it that doesn’t fear starvation—is eating more alike than it has since the Middle Ages.” (The Taste of Conquest)

The internationalization of chili, tomato and potato and the spread of spices means that mankind is now Eating in the Homogenocene. Food moves slightly slower than writing, video and audio around our planetary networks, but not much slower. 

CULINARY COMPRESSION

Spices are a form of culinary compression. Large amounts of potent smell and flavor information can be transmitted great distances in the form of spices. “There would be no demand for Indian pepper in medieval Europe if the berries weren’t light and non-perishable to be shipped.” (TOC) Spices are one of the most fungible food products in the world. There are different grades of spices for specialty markets, but most eaters are not aware or picky about the provenance of their spices. The global taste for spice continues to increase, paralleling a rise in processed food which is increasingly well-spiced. Between 1961 – 1994, the volume of spices imported into the U.S. increased by 400% and doubled again in the next decade. (TOC)

“A food manufacturer doesn’t want a truckload of ginger; they want a containerload of a ready-made flavoring mixture. Enter McCormick: the flavor company.”(TOC) Companies like McCormick shape and then capitalize on changing taste preferences, mellowing exotic flavors for domestic markets, and creating entire corporate cuisines which can be dropped anywhere in the world without regard to ecology, season or tradition. Spices are closer to pure information than most other foods.

KFC. A GOOD HELLO WORLD FOR CFK: CULINARY FORENSICS KIT

KFC spice mix is a McCormick product.(TOC) In part the CFK project was inspired by the high security and secrecy that surround the Kentucky Fried Chicken spice mix. The article “KFC Hires Armed BodyGuards to Protect 11 Herbs & Spices Recipe” explains: 

Pssst. The secret’s out at KFC. Well, sort of. Colonel Harland Sanders’ handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices was to be removed Tuesday from safekeeping at KFC’s corporate offices for the first time in decades. The temporary relocation is allowing KFC to revamp security around a yellowing sheet of paper that contains one of the country’s most famous corporate secrets.

The brand’s top executive admitted his nerves were aflutter despite the tight security he lined up for the operation.

“I don’t want to be the president who loses the recipe,” KFC President Roger Eaton said. “Imagine how terrifying that would be.”

So important is the 68-year-old concoction that coats the chain’s Original Recipe chicken that only two company executives at any time have access to it. The company refuses to release their name or title, and it uses multiple suppliers who produce and blend the ingredients but know only a part of the entire contents.

But in the process of marketing the pseudo event of moving the recipe, the company provided this image:

Assuming it is accurate most of the handwork is done for reverese engineering the mix. We already know the number and color of each of the 11 spices. Other foodhackers have gone before us.

Once mechanically separated taste, sight and smell can be employed to identify the ingredients. In cases where that is impossible, other physical and chemical and biological diagnostic tools (chromatography, etc.) can be developed, and added to a growing tool kit for a more general Culinary Forensics that goes beyond spice mixes.

PROTOTYPING METHODS FROM THE BIOPUNK IMAGINARY 

WindUp Girl. . . .

There is an argument to be made for Open Source biotechnology that goes something like this: The (biotech) genie is out of the bottle. Better that many individuals and institutions have access to the tools of biotechnology. It may surprise many readers that even Michael Pollan has made this argument!

1. Ideologically we want science and industry to be open and transparent endeavors, and if Biotech is not going away, it needs at least be open, testable and verifiable by many minds.

2. Both science and industrial practitioners have used the metaphor of biotechnology as being like computer code. Extending this metaphor means that we would want a large and distributed network of biohackers checking code, and ready to respond in the case of an emergency.

However, what will this practice look like? How will non-institutional actors take apart biological designs in order to understand and reshape them? The Institute of the Future gives one scenario in their recent report on food:

“The open-source movement of Brazil latches onto the idea of open-source food and reverse engineering of proprietary new formulations. Food hacker collectives emanate from universities and supply much of the world with ideas for new foods.”[3]  

* * * * * *

[ 1 ] In the autumn of 2012 one person emailed us and asked if the Center for Genomic Gastronomy could help her find out what was in a spice blend that Grandma left behind. At the time we didn’t have the tools, so we realized we would need to discover or create the tools to do so.

[ 2 ] For a pro-exclusivist / closed-culture perspective on intellectual property and recipes see: New Era of the Recipe Burglars by Pete Wells 

[2] It is also horrific to learn about how those particular spices entered the world market. The absolute despotism of the Dutch East India company in the Spice Islands is recounted in grim detail in Part 3 of The Taste of Conquest.

[3] This particular narrative seems to emphasize chemical over biological analysis and creation, but no specific details are given. (What does the IFTF think is in the refill cartridges of 3-D food printers? Bacteria hacked to spit out different flavors? If not that I would assume an extrudable substrate with lots of tubes of spices and essential oils.). Here is a bit more detail: 

“In Africa and Latin America, community groups are investing in shared food printers. By 2021, hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs all over the world have established businesses selling downloadable recipes that work with 3D printers for everything from snacks to entire meals. Known as Food Gurus, these tinkerers have remade food consumption in the same way that social media and bloggers transformed the media landscape in the 2000s. The frequency with which people eat out at restaurants has plummeted, and so have sales of most packaged foods and drinks (although food companies were quick to provide downloadable recipes of their own).”

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is in the process of creating a new book, called “Food Phreaking”, and we need YOUR HELP in deciding what kinds of activities to include!

Our book will be a map and a list of historical or contemporary food phreaking activities. As well as some dubious corporate and criminal food-hacking activities.

We need your suggestions / feedback! Help us figure out what the heck “FoodPhreaking” is. And of course you will get a thank you and a shout in the back of the book.

Ideally we would like a short (1 or 2 tweet lengths) description and a URL if you have one.

Below is an initial map design (it will change!) and an initial brainstorm of activities. 

Q: Where should I leave my suggestions?

A: You can tweet them to us (@centgg), put them on Zack or Cat’s facebook page, or email them to info@genomicgastronomy.com

Q: What is Food Phreaking?

A: Food Phreaking is a term coined to describe the activity of people who study, experiment with, or explore food systems. (See: wikipedia/Phreaking for some inspiration from the world of tech.)

Q: How many activities are you planning on including in the book?

A: Ideally 5 – 8 from each quadrant.

Q: What is the format of the book?

A: On one page will be a short description of the activity (1 – 2 tweet lengths). On the other page will be a creative commons image done up all fancy. We will hopefully print in 2- color with a funky ink. We will sandwhich all those pages in a cover with a map.

ILLEGAL + OPEN

RAW MILK CLUBS
Raw milk is illegal in some states of the U.S., and in Canada, Australia and Scotland. However, there are many advocates of raw milk who drink it illegally.

UNDERGROUND SUPPER CLUBS
Becoming increasingly more popular and visible in recent years, their legal status is in a grey area in many countries.

SELLING HOMEMADE FOODS WITHOUT PERMISSION
Technically illegal, many turn a blind eye to cottage industries where people sell foods made at home.

LEGAL + CLOSED

DEATH BY ENERGY DRINK

According to reports by the US FDA, 5 people may have died from 2009 – 2012 after drinking Monster Energy, a popular high-caffeine energy drink. (source).

PINK SLIME
It’s used in many processed meat products, but not manypeople know it’s exact contents.

FEEDING ANIMALS IN THE EU WITH GM PRODUCTS
Although it is illegal to serve GM foods to humans, it is perfectly fine to feed it to European pigs, chickens and cattle.

LEGAL + OPEN

HYPER MELON

Hypermelon is melon that has been vacuum infused with an energy drink, helping to mask the semimedicinal flavor of the energy drink, making consumption of those beverages even more dangerous. (source)

RECIPES
Recipes can’t have a copy- right or a patent.

GLOWING SUSHI COOKING SHOW
Eating GloFishTM is not illegal, although breeding them is because they are a patented animal.

VEGAN ORTOLAN
No animals are killed for this dish.

ILLEGAL + CLOSED

FAKE CELLOPHANE NOODLES
One company was caught using corn startch instead of mung beans and lead was added to make the noodles transparent. (source)

“DESIGNER” METHANOL
Homebrew liquor repackaged in designer bottles recently left 19 people dead  in the Czech Republic.

ORTOLAN
This French dish which involves eating a small bird whole is now illegal to sell in the EU. But is sometimes served on the sly.

FOOD CORPORATE ESPIONAGE
Is it legal to reverse engineer closely guarded recipes such as Coca Cola or KFC chicken? 

PREPARED CHEESE PRODUCT
In 2002, the U.S. FDA issued a Warning Letter to Kraft that Velveeta was being sold with packaging that inaccurately described it as a “Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread.” Instead of complying with the label’s requirements Kraft rechristened Velveeta “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product,” a term for which the FDA does not maintain a standard of identity. (source)

The Center has been in Stavanger for the last couple of weeks, invited to take part in the Article 12 new media art festival. The highlight was ArtMeatFlesh – an evening hosted by SybioticA, where Genomic Gastronomers were pitted against each other in a cooking challenge. Zack was on a team with scientist Liv Torunn Mydland and chef Rune Larsen while Cat competed with the bioethisist Roger Strand and chef Atle Lura. Producing five courses each, both teams tackled the hopes and fears of future meat consumption, including the production of InVitro meat. We’ll have exact recipes and more details soon!

Image credit: Simon Serigstad

THE END IS NIGH

What would you eat if there was an emergency? If catastrophe strikes, what plants are YOU growing, and what do you have stockpiled in your pantry? What would you like your last meal to be? 

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy has very much enjoyed it’s stay in Singapore, but all good things must eventually come to an end. We’d like to finish with a BANG.

Join us on Friday 28th September, 2012 for the RECIPES FOR DISASTER picnic in the botanical gardens near Symphony Lake. Bring along a dish and taste test your way through other responses to the apocalypse. We hope to document the recipes and the stories behind all the dishes that you bring. 

Some apocalyptic themes that might inspire your dish: Peal Oil, Water Wars, End of Days, the Singularity. What does climate change taste like? 

To sign up visit http://www.facebook.com/events/417823304943868/

The three groups that formed on the first day continued where they left off in the morning of day two, with the goal of creating a very basic prototype by the end of the day. A group of 12 NUS undergraduate students joined us for the second half of the day. Denisa took them through a brainstorming exercise to think about extreme scenarios for eating during the anthropocene, and then they split into groups of three to work on different projects: food forecasting, future imaging and hunting for unusual ingredients.

NEW FOOD RITUALS 

There were no chemists on the team, so finding simple testing methods for mercury or pesticides proved difficult. However, the team uncovered a number of easy ways to create DIY ‘pH paper’, or even liquid. An overview of different methods was found here. 

Deciding to try the Red Cabbage method, where alkaline changes the paper to green; acids to red, we brainstormed various applications for this pH detector. What pH do different foods have? What does it mean to eat an acidic diet or an alkaline diet? How would knowing the pH of your food affect your eating habits?

From dipping pieces of food into the pH cabbage water, to soaking wooden chopsticks in it to make them pH sensative, eventually we decided to try and create a pH sensitive tablecloth. Given time constraints and lack of ingredients, this was not completed in time on day two, but distilled water is currently being infused by red cabbage in order to have a prototype ready for tomorrow’s symposium. 

Jaz and Cat looking for methods to make pH paper and red cabbage soaking.

CHANCE-BASED EATING HABITS

After going through a number of possible interface designs (wheel of chance, strong man fair-ground scale, pinwheel) we settled on prototyping a dice, because a working prototype could be made quickly, and it is easily transported and replicable.
 

Dice drawings by Jodi Newcombe

The dice could be used at an event such as the Massivley Multiplayer Carbon Reduction Dinner Competition which is like a playing card game where you eat as well. Each diner is a player, and rolls the dice at the start of the course (amuse bouche, salad, appetizer, main course, side dish, desert). Each dice roll determines which version of the course they will get. Different versions have different ingredients and different carbon loads. Every player gets one chance to re-roll during the game, and there only limited numbers of each kind of plate. The last one to roll gets stuck with whatever is left, and the order of the dice rolls changes each turn. The eater with the lowest carbon count at the end of the meal wins! (And everyone hopefully has a good time leaving the complicated ethics of carbon accounted food up to the roll of the dice).

The idea of chance continues to be an interesting and unexplored technique for changing behavior, and removing information overload around personal environmental choices. 

DINING WITH BIG DATA

Figuring out the Makey Makey and recording Big Data audio

This group got started the morning off by discussing ways for the prototype to manifest itself. Using a makey makey as a prototyping tool, they decided to create an interaction between a human eater and an avacado. When the eater cuts into the avacado, it triggers audio that either tells you good or bad big data health consequences related to eating avacados. The audio was developed as a script of the ‘good angel’ and the ‘devil’ as a classic symbol of the mind wrestling with morals, desires, and consquences, but in this case a battle of the good data vs the bad data. In addition, this interaction happened in front of a computer with a webcam so the eater sees herself reflected. As the avacado is sliced and diced an angel or a devil appears on the eater’s shoulder depending on what audio is triggered.

FOOD FORECASTING

This was an additional excerise with the group of undergraduate students. Taking inspiration from trend forecasting practices, this exercise was devised to imagine what a food forecasting practice might be like. The Center has long considered how certain ingredients go from being somewhat fringe to being ubiquitous in supermarkets and at restauraunts. For example, the rise of pomegranetes and black garlic in Western cuisine. Is it linked to scientific discoveries? Celebrety chef recipe books? We wonder: can food forecasting be used to create meaningful changes in the food system, or simply new fads?

The students were divided into teams and had to imagine what food trends might emerge in the future. Zack played the Boss of a food forecasting company and the teams were working for him. At the end of the exercise, the two teams presented their food forecasting ideas to a panel of judges that decided which trends to take forward.

  Presentation to the panel of judges

Day 2 allowed us to refine our initial ideas, and create some simple prototypes. At least a few of these ideas will be carried on in our research over the coming months, and it was a treat to engage with so many different thinkers and makers.

Today the Center hosted day 1 of a 2 day workshop on “Designing in the Anthropocene: Food, Health & Climate” that will conclude with a symposium later this week. The National University of Singapore have been great hosts, with faculty, students and complete strangers dropping by on the first day of workshops. (We even had a faculty member from Nanyang Technological University).

The morning session was spent brainstorming possible interesting topics, in relation to food, climate change and food security. Singapore’s status as a net importer of almost everything (food, fuel, products) shaped our brainstorming process. Singapore’s government and many inhabitants are aware of Singapore’s reliance on many flows outside of their borders in order to survive. One participant described Singapore as having a “permeable membrane”: many things flow through Singapore, but the government is very careful and choosy about what they want to stay  within the border. Another metaphor we developed was “Spaceship Earth: Cruiseship Singapore”. 

Our brainstorming lead us to three main tracks:

* New Food Rituals
* Food for the End of the World
* Dining with Big Data 

NEW FOOD RITUALS

The first track was inspired by every eater’s desire to assess and consume healthful food. We began thinking about ways that eaters could test the fish that they catch for Mercury content, or even radiation count. Two interesting historical precedents for food testing were food rituals employed to prevent poisoning: 

* Korean nobility used silver chopsticks so that if there were poison in their food the chopsticks would corrode. A good example of food & sensing technology from way back.
* There is also the idea that nobility in Europe would “Cheers” and clink mugs of beer/mead so that if either was poisoned, both eaters would suffer the consequences. 

Both of these examples we relayed by word of mouth, and no one in the workshop knew for certain if they were real or merely legend, or how exactly they worked. However, these examples helped us start to imagine what kind of new food rituals might be useful for eaters today. Most of us are not worried about being poisoned by political enemies, but rather by the pervasive and ambient toxins and pollutants that humans have released into the biosphere. In day two we hope to prototype a couple of food rituals.

FOOD FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

The second track began as a series of ideas about recipes relating to the end of something: vanishing flavors and genomes, eating during peak oil, cuisine & climate change. However, one of the groups started looking into failed food utopias and possible future food utopias. Historical examples have suggested that globally humans should turn to eating insects, algae, breadfruit or nutritional yeast. However, these top-down modernist ideas often ignore flavour, culture and preference, so the group decided to investigate of ways to cook with the utopian ingredients. By creating recipes that represent these failed utopias on the plate, the group hope to initiate a material exploration of failure and dreams for the future.

 DINING WITH BIG DATA

The third strand are interested in how big data effects the way we eat. Making the ‘right choice’ when consuming food is very difficult when every week new research reveals raised chances of cancer or new health benefits of a specific food. The amount of information available is overwhelming, and to what end? Death is always the inevitable conclusion to life. So this group decided to create a tool for preparing you for death. What would it be like to eat an avocado and be told all the negative effects of this activity in the process? What would it be if you were told only positive effects? What would your dining experience be like if you invited Big Data for dinner? This is the starting point for this strand, and in day two they plan to prototype this experience.

Denisa and Jaz hard at work