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171 points rguiscard | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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notepad0x90 ◴[] No.46240860[source]
meet tastes great and all, but I wonder where science is at (if at all) on making original food that tastes good. How about food that doesn't taste like any natural food we've had, but still tastes really good?

Jell-o (gello?) is a good example, nothing tastes like it naturally. Why aren't there tasty food that are original in terms of taste and texture but good for health and the environment? I suppose part of the struggle is that food is entrenched into culture so much. burgers and bbq are inextricable from july 4th and memorial day for example.

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1. dkbrk ◴[] No.46241228[source]
Your question is rather ambiguous. Do you mean using chemistry to develop new techniques or combine unusual ingredients to create food that has novel flavors or textures? That would fall under Molecular Gastronomy, which has been highly influential within fine dining in the last few decades.

Do you mean processing ingredients with the goal to take cheap ingredients and make a product as hyper-palatable as possible? That would generally be called "ultra-processed food"; you're not going to find a Doritos chip in nature.

Do you mean developing completely completely new flavors via chemical synthesis? I don't think there's much possibility there. Our senses have evolved to detect compounds found in nature, so it's unlikely a synthetic compound can produce a flavor completely unlike anything found in nature.

Also, I think you're overestimating jelly. Gelatine is just a breakdown product of collagen. Boil animal connective tissue, purify the gelatine, add sugar and flavoring and set it into a gel. It's really only a few of techniques removed from nature. If you want to say it's not found in nature, then fair enough, but neither is a medium-rare steak.