Sports Nutrition, Hydration and Performance

Sports Nutrition, Hydration and Performance

An athlete’s diet has a significant impact on their performance, especially leading up to and during an important event. Specific nutritional recommendations have been established for athletes for before, during and after an event, in particular for fluid intake.

Water is an essential component of an athlete’s diet. The body is composed of 50-60% of water which equates to between 30 to 50 litres. It is very important to keep the body’s total water content constant, as dehydration can hinder an athlete’s performance. Water is lost from the body through sweat and evaporative losses, which increase dramatically during exercise and can result in more than 2% loss in body weight.

Dehydration causes a fall in plasma volume, which means that less oxygen can be transported around the body. This results in a rise in body temperature which is associated with an increase in muscle glycogen breakdown and can cause premature fatigue. Hypernatremia, low plasma sodium, is associated with loss of electrolytes in sweat. This is dangerous as electrolytes are associated with maintaining fluid balance. The body should be kept hydrated at all times during exercise to ensure cognitive and coordination functions are optimal.

Prior to an event, the goal is to ensure that any fluid and electrolyte deficiency is correct. Hydrating can begin progressively about 4 hours before the event. 5-7 ml of fluid per kg body weight is advised. Studies have shown that hyperhydration provides no clear physiological or performance advantages over euhydration, which means that the body’s water content is stable. Depending on the sport, fluid intake during exercise is also recommended to account for all the water lost from sweating. Rehydration after exercise is of great importance to revitalise the body and to counteract all the water and electrolytes lost during exercise.

There is an on-going debate over whether water or sports beverages are most beneficial for an athlete. Both fluid types work efficiently in maintaining hydration levels, but in terms of supplying energy and maintaining electrolyte balance during exercise a sports drink is the better option . Sports beverages are more beneficial to endurance athletes who train for longer than thirty minutes.

The carbohydrate content of a sports drink is recommended to be 6-8%. It can be used as another source of energy which will delay fatigue. The sodium content in sports drinks act as an electrolyte and helps maintain blood volume which aids in transporting oxygen around the body. Sports beverages are less beneficial to those who exercise for less than thirty minute as water lost through sweat and therefore dehydration is the main concern for them. For exercise routines that are less than thirty minutes, there are insufficient amounts of the glycogen store being used to truly benefit from an intake of a sports drink.

Recent finding have revealed that milk can be regarded as one of the best recovery fluids for resistance exercise due to its high nutrient content. It was found that milk is more effective at replacing sweat losses and maintaining euhydration than plain water or sports drinks ). This is due to the fact that milk contains all of the essential amino acids which are required to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Carbohydrates within the milk and from other sources stimulate the release of insulin when ingested. Insulin and amino acids work together to increase the net muscle protein balance which is the balance of amino acids in the arteries and veins. This then stimulates net muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth .

In conclusion, what we can say for sure is that regardless of the type of fluid consumed, it is essential that athletes remain hydrated at all times especially in preparation, during and after an event.

what is diabetes

What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a complex group of diseases with a variety of causes. People with diabetes have high blood glucose, also called high blood sugar or hyperglycemia.
Diabetes is a disorder of metabolism—the way the body uses digested food for energy. The digestive tract breaks down carbohydrates—sugars and starches found in many foods—into glucose, a form of sugar that enters the bloodstream. With the help of the hormone insulin, cells throughout the body absorb glucose and use it for energy. Diabetes develops when the body doesn’t make enough insulin or is not able to use insulin effectively, or both.
Insulin is made in the pancreas, an organ located behind the stomach. The pancreas contains clusters of cells called islets. Beta cells within the islets make insulin and release it into the blood.

Islets within the pancreas contain beta cells,
which make insulin and release it into the blood.

If beta cells don’t produce enough insulin, or the body doesn’t respond to the insulin that is present, glucose builds up in the blood instead of being absorbed by cells in the body, leading to prediabetes or diabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which blood glucose levels or A1C levels—which reflect average blood glucose levels—are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. In diabetes, the body’s cells are starved of energy despite high blood glucose levels.
Over time, high blood glucose damages nerves and blood vessels, leading to complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, dental disease, and amputations. Other complications of diabetes may include increased susceptibility to other diseases, loss of mobility with aging, depression, and pregnancy problems. No one is certain what starts the processes that cause diabetes, but scientists believe genes and environmental factors interact to cause diabetes in most cases.
The two main types of diabetes are type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. A third type, gestational diabetes, develops only during pregnancy. Other types of diabetes are caused by defects in specific genes, diseases of the pancreas, certain drugs or chemicals, infections, and other conditions. Some people show signs of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

What causes type 1 diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin due to the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes—an autoimmune disease—the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the beta cells. Normally, the immune system protects the body from infection by identifying and destroying bacteria, viruses, and other potentially harmful foreign substances. But in autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body’s own cells. In type 1 diabetes, beta cell destruction may take place over several years, but symptoms of the disease usually develop over a short period of time.
Type 1 diabetes typically occurs in children and young adults, though it can appear at any age. In the past, type 1 diabetes was called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) may be a slowly developing kind of type 1 diabetes. Diagnosis usually occurs after age 30. In LADA, as in type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system destroys the beta cells. At the time of diagnosis, people with LADA may still produce their own insulin, but eventually most will need insulin shots or an insulin pump to control blood glucose levels.

Genetic Susceptibility

Heredity plays an important part in determining who is likely to develop type 1 diabetes. Genes are passed down from biological parent to child. Genes carry instructions for making proteins that are needed for the body’s cells to function. Many genes, as well as interactions among genes, are thought to influence susceptibility to and protection from type 1 diabetes. The key genes may vary in different population groups. Variations in genes that affect more than 1 percent of a population group are called gene variants.
Certain gene variants that carry instructions for making proteins called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) on white blood cells are linked to the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. The proteins produced by HLA genes help determine whether the immune system recognizes a cell as part of the body or as foreign material. Some combinations of HLA gene variants predict that a person will be at higher risk for type 1 diabetes, while other combinations are protective or have no effect on risk.
While HLA genes are the major risk genes for type 1 diabetes, many additional risk genes or gene regions have been found. Not only can these genes help identify people at risk for type 1 diabetes, but they also provide important clues to help scientists better understand how the disease develops and identify potential targets for therapy and prevention.
Genetic testing can show what types of HLA genes a person carries and can reveal other genes linked to diabetes. However, most genetic testing is done in a research setting and is not yet available to individuals. Scientists are studying how the results of genetic testing can be used to improve type 1 diabetes prevention or treatment.

Autoimmune Destruction of Beta Cells

In type 1 diabetes, white blood cells called T cells attack and destroy beta cells. The process begins well before diabetes symptoms appear and continues after diagnosis. Often, type 1 diabetes is not diagnosed until most beta cells have already been destroyed. At this point, a person needs daily insulin treatment to survive. Finding ways to modify or stop this autoimmune process and preserve beta cell function is a major focus of current scientific research.
Recent research suggests insulin itself may be a key trigger of the immune attack on beta cells. The immune systems of people who are susceptible to developing type 1 diabetes respond to insulin as if it were a foreign substance, or antigen. To combat antigens, the body makes proteins called antibodies. Antibodies to insulin and other proteins produced by beta cells are found in people with type 1 diabetes. Researchers test for these antibodies to help identify people at increased risk of developing the disease. Testing the types and levels of antibodies in the blood can help determine whether a person has type 1 diabetes, LADA, or another type of diabetes.

Environmental Factors

Environmental factors, such as foods, viruses, and toxins, may play a role in the development of type 1 diabetes, but the exact nature of their role has not been determined. Some theories suggest that environmental factors trigger the autoimmune destruction of beta cells in people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes. Other theories suggest that environmental factors play an ongoing role in diabetes, even after diagnosis.
Viruses and infections. A virus cannot cause diabetes on its own, but people are sometimes diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during or after a viral infection, suggesting a link between the two. Also, the onset of type 1 diabetes occurs more frequently during the winter when viral infections are more common. Viruses possibly associated with type 1 diabetes include coxsackievirus B, cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, rubella, and mumps. Scientists have described several ways these viruses may damage or destroy beta cells or possibly trigger an autoimmune response in susceptible people. For example, anti-islet antibodies have been found in patients with congenital rubella syndrome, and cytomegalovirus has been associated with significant beta cell damage and acute pancreatitis––inflammation of the pancreas. Scientists are trying to identify a virus that can cause type 1 diabetes so that a vaccine might be developed to prevent the disease.
Infant feeding practices. Some studies have suggested that dietary factors may raise or lower the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. For example, breastfed infants and infants receiving vitamin D supplements may have a reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes, while early exposure to cow’s milk and cereal proteins may increase risk. More research is needed to clarify how infant nutrition affects the risk for type 1 diabetes.

FOWL PLAY

Fowl play
They are the ultimate 21st-century food - quick, easy and highly processed. But if you knew about the high percentage of skin, the water, and the pulped carcasses that go into some of them, would you be so keen to reach into the freezer for chicken nuggets? In a major investigation

Europe is big on breasts. The Japanese prefer thighs, dark and gamey ones. Feet are a bit of a fetish in China. Gizzards go to Russia. But smooth, damp slabs of white flesh are what we British buy when we want chicken. That leaves the carcasses, and skin, mountains and mountains of it - pale, flaccid, pimply, raw, ripped off by 100,000 shift workers' hands, from Thailand to Brazil, from the Netherlands to Norfolk. The skin goes around the world for chicken nuggets.
I am watching an army of small, perfectly formed nuggets march along a conveyor belt, with manufacturer Gary Stiles, at his factory in Wiltshire. He has spent his life in the meat trade. At one end of the factory line is a pulp of half-frozen meat and skin in a giant stainless-steel hopper. Minced and mixed beyond recognition, it is being extruded through a small tube on to metal plates. These press it into pale pink nugget shapes which then trundle on down the belt. Through a dust bath of flour and seasoning they go, before being lowered under a sheet of constantly pouring batter. Then on in juddering formation through a tray of scattered breadcrumbs and into a vast vat of boiling oil for 30 seconds.

As they emerge, workers in white coats, blue hairnets and white boots catch them, bag them in plastic, and post them back for the last rites. The belt carries them into a nitrogen tunnel to take them down to freezing and finally out into a cardboard box, labelled with his own brand Pure Organics For Georgia's Sake or Tesco organic chicken nuggets, according to the orders of the day.

Above the roar of machinery, Stiles explains that you need some skin to keep the nuggets succulent; 15% is about right, he reckons. Mixed in that proportion with breast and dark meat, it matches what you would get if you were eating a whole bird, and he knows exactly where his comes from. Like the rest of his meat, his skin is bought from two organic farms that he knows personally, one in England, one in Wales. Unlike some manufacturers, he won't use more skin than that, and he won't use mechanically recovered meat (MRM), which is obtained by pushing the carcass through a giant teabag-like screen to produce a slurry of protein, then bound back together with polyphosphates and gums. Nor does he use other additives.

Stiles likes to think that his nuggets, at £1.99 for 250g, are, like the beer, "reassuringly expensive". But the trouble is, once you've minced bits of a chicken to a pulp, that pulp could be anything from anywhere. With other manufacturers, sometimes it is. Recycled pet food, breasts injected with pig and cattle proteins, banned carcinogenic antibiotics - they've all been found by the authorities recently in chicken destined for processing.

Denatured and deracinated, the chicken nugget is a symbol of the way we eat now. It is the epitome of our 21st-century system of globalised, industrial food production.

Like much of our diet today, the nugget is processed so highly that its taste and texture depend as much on engineering and additives as on any raw ingredients, making it an easy way to disguise cheap or adulterated food. And just as the nugget's form is far removed from its contents, so we have become completely divorced from the source of those contents, from the animals that provide them and from the people who transform them. The nugget is, in fact, the product of a transnational chain so fragmented and complex that even those in the business do not fully understand how some parts of it work.

It depends on the industrialisation of livestock, on an endless supply of uniform factory birds to fit standardised factory machines. It depends, too, on the mass migration of workers, both legal and illegal, since adding the value to it requires an equally endless supply of low-value labour.

The rise of the nugget has been dizzying. We bought 42 million packs of them - that's £79m worth, or 21,000 tonnes - in the UK last year, just to eat at home, according to analysts Taylor Nelson Sofres. British adults also ate 73 million meals of them away from home in the same period. Children probably ate more. Served in school dining halls, fast-food outlets, at hospital bedsides, and on the tables of harassed parents, nuggets have become ubiquitous. Mass production has created a homogeneity in our diets at a time when the origins of our food are more varied than ever. If you want to know what goes into your nuggets, you need to look to the commodity markets, exchange rates and tariffs. The label is not the place to find out.

One story earlier this year highlighted just how little we know about what lies inside the golden breadcrumb coating. When Leicestershire trading standards received a complaint from a member of the public about the quality of some nuggets, they decided to test 21 samples from 17 different shops, including the major supermarkets. In one-third of the samples, the label was misleading about the nugget's meat content. One pack of nuggets contained only 16% meat, 30% less than it claimed. (And skin, of course, counts as "meat"). The trading standards officials are unable to identify the brands involved for legal reasons. Instead, they gave a warning to the worst offender. Subsequent tests recently have shown that the manufacturer has not changed its ways. Look further back down the chain, and it becomes clear that doctoring has become routine.

Even if the percentage of meat in a nugget looks reassuringly high, you may be surprised by what exactly counts as meat. Nugget manufacturers source their meat in various ways. Some use British chicken. Some buy high-quality meat direct from Thailand or Brazil. Some buy whatever is cheapest on the market, which is often frozen Thai and Brazilian chicken imported into the EU through Holland's ports.

The Netherlands is the centre of the "tumbling" industry, a process in which chicken is bulked up with water and other additives. Dutch processors defrost the meat and then inject it with dozens of needles, or tumble it in giant cement-mixer-like machines, until the water is absorbed. Salted meat attracts only a fraction of the EU tariff applied to fresh meat. The tumbling helps dilute the salt to make the chicken palatable, so as well as making huge profits selling water, the processors can avoid substantial duties. Once it has been tumbled, the meat is refrozen and shipped on for further processing.

The story gets less appetising still. One of the things that has puzzled observers of the poultry industry is how some processors manage to get so much water to stay in the chicken. Why doesn't it just flood out when it is turned into a takeaway or a ready meal or a chicken nugget? Hull trading standards officer John Sandford has spent over five years investigating. The answer he discovered was profoundly shocking.

DNA tests specially developed by Sandford with the public analyst laboratory in Manchester enabled the English food standards agency to identify lots of water (in one case 43%) and traces of pork proteins in samples of Dutch chicken breasts labelled "halal". Six months later, Irish authorities made an even more unsettling discovery in chicken: undeclared bovine proteins. Seventeen samples from Dutch processors contained them. Some manufacturers were using a new technique - injecting so-called hydrolysed proteins. These are proteins extracted at high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis from old animals or parts of animals which are no use for food, such as skin, feathers, hide, bone and ligaments, and rather like cosmetic collagen implants, they make the flesh swell up and retain liquid.

These discoveries raised as many questions as they answered. What kind of cow products had been used to produce bovine proteins? If the processors were not declaring the presence of bovine proteins on the labels, could they be trusted to follow the regulations on removing certain high-risk cattle materials from the food chain? The possibility of BSE in chicken meat had raised its ugly head.

Chicken from the Dutch processors named by the Irish authorities remains widely available in the UK. Industry sources say that some nugget manufacturers at the bottom end of the market buy tumbled Dutch chicken, although they would be unaware that some processors' meat contains bovine proteins.

Others nuggets will be made from various bits of British chicken. Some are made from chunks of chicken breast and skin. Some are mostly skin, or skin and MRM. If tumbled meat is being used, the chicken is defrosted in microwaves before being minced into nuggets. Manufacturers can neutralise the salty taste by adding sugar in various forms, often as dextrose or lactose, and put flavour back in with chicken flavourings in the meat pulp, in the batter or in the breadcrumbs. Other additives can help restore the texture. Soya proteins are the commonest used, with gums as emulsifiers, to stop the whole mix separating out again. Phosphates also help glue up the proteins. Some nuggets are made in Britain, but increasingly nuggets are also imported ready-made from developing countries. If a manufacturer does anything to the chicken in this country, it can be legally labelled "produced in England". To get to the beginning of the nugget story, though, we must head east, to a land of chicken and cheap labour.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise near CP Towers in Bangkok is chilly, its automatic doors and air conditioning sealing it off from the blast of 40C heat outside - and the choking smog of east Asia's fastest-developing city. There is one family group sharing a tray of chicken nuggets - a Thai mother and father with a fat little boy bursting from a designer leather jacket, but the other patrons are all alone, disconnected, eating their fast food with silent efficiency. The nuggets slip down. Hot and crisp on the outside, soft and moist inside, they have that textureless, easy-on-the-jaw, flavoured "mouth feel" that children like.

A McDonald's supplier claims the invention of the nugget in 1979. McDonald's, worried by the trend away from red meat towards "healthier" white meat, asked Keystone Foods if it could produce a boneless chicken finger food which would be in keeping with its other fast food. Keystone laboratories came up with McNuggets, little gobbets of minced, reconstituted chicken, battered and breaded.

As a nugget manufacturer, Gary Stiles thinks that we have become too disconnected from our food and disconnection has bred fear and mistrust. He was forced to remake the connection between what he made and what he fed his children when his daughter, Georgia, the Georgia of his brand name, turned out to be autistic. He and his wife started to research the link between diet and illness. He now feels that "if you put junk in, you get junk out", and he's not prepared to do that any more.

se my nominee page here:http://dannythechef52-9-member-nominee.htm

Espresso machilada and a cappuchino. Wonderful full flavoured Italian coffee to start the day of.(when in roam). Today we go to visit the excavated ruins of the city of Pompeii which was covered completely in 79 a.d after the eruption of mount Vesuvius. The after effects of the earthquake didn't destroy the city it engulfed, it preserved it. This means heading off from Casa Del Poppolo to Pompeii via Naples. Italy is only 150 yrs approx. united. So when you leave one area and cross into another you could get the feeling that you are in a different country. It is unmistakable to avoid pizza while in Rome. Rome pizza is traditionally thin and crispy, while in Napoli there is three strict criteria to be adhered to qualify as Neapolitan pizza

. (1) Tomato Sauce.(wonderfully baby like plum tomatoes called San Marzano are the only tomatoes used for tomato sauce in Napoli. A wonderfully sweet sun ripened tomato simply seasoned and pulped into a sauce. A definite must for any food lover. (unfortunately the food in Italy was not always as rich as today. For years the diet consisted of vegetables, fish sauces (fish fermented for four days crushed and mixed with white sauces) and pulses and beans. It was not until   Christopher Columbus discovered the new world and brought things like potatoes etc. to Europe did the Italian diet improve. For years the tomato was considered a poisonous fruit, because they didn't know how to use them.It grew every where. Not Until one day someone decided to eat one and like nowadays the tomato became an important ingredient in the Italian diet)

(2). Unlike pizza in Rome, Neapolitan pizza has a thick outer crust narrowing to a thin crisp centre.

(3) The oven for cooking Neapolitan pizzas must be domed shape.

The fare on offer today in the Tiberius restaurant was exquisite tasting Neapolitan pizza.

Bianca - cheese and ham (no tomato sauce)

Margheritta - Cheese , tomato and , Basil,

Neapolitan - Pastry base with San Marzano tomato sauce.



Also associated with pizza is Mozzarella cheese. But not mozzarella as we know it. To Italians mozzarella does not come in a block. Traditionally mozzarella is made by separating curd and whey. Then the curd is warmed in a vat and stretched by hand . The cheese is pinched of into balls and then stored in the whey. You can see finger marks on the balls where the cheese was pinched away and formed into a ball. The small town of Cassino , between Rome and Napoli is rich in fertile lands and green pastures. People seem to mispronounce the Buffala part. Most people outside of Italy refer to it as buffalo Mozzarella. An O at the end of the word in certain Italian words is masculine. But as we know bulls don't have milk. So therefore the pronunciation is "buffala Mozzarella" (feminine). And another important interesting fact to note is that you will never find fruit (pineapple /orange etc ) on a pizza in Italy or will you find any more than three ingredients on a pizza for the simple reason they don't like to complicate or overpower flavours with other flavours.

Because of the lush green pastures it is an area that is flush of olive trees (which are planted this time of the year and should be just beginning to blossom. The olive is pressed in November to create extra virgin olive oil "often described as liquid Gold" The tour guide informed us to buy a good quality olive oil at wholesale price in Italy is €6. They don't sell cheaper at a loss to anyone. Considering the yield of any olive press is between 10-17%.


This year is predicted to be a good year for harvesting unlike the last few years.

But that's not the reason for telling you that, the reason is next time your in the shop and you buy olive oil at €6 euro bottle or less you need to question the quality of the oil.

Lardo Muffato.

IN Ireland we have one or two remaining Cafollas left. One is close to us, in Ccastlebar town. A must when we go to Castlebar shopping etc. There chips are famous and the reason being is they cook them at low temperature, in lard, and use Maris piper chipping potatoes. The cooking in lard is a tradition associated with the Campian Region of Italy. There they have specially moulded lard and they serve it at meal times.

Lemons are a tradition to the Campian region also. They are bigger than normal lemons . As you will see in the slide show at the end. The lemons are used to make "Lemon cello" a traditional Lemon liqueur meant to be sipped rathered than knocked back. Lemoncello is associared with Campian, Roman and Napoli regions. After a long day at work or on holidays, the Italians recommend ice cooled (lemoncello) cold to revitalise you, but be careful one or two is plenty or you may be looking for the short way home.

Raphael Esposito

I feel i must mention this guy,he has nothing to do with the Vatican,Colosseum or any archaeological sites in Rome.he was commissioned to create a pizza for the visit of queen marghareita as mentioned earlier in the blog there are three types of pizza associated with Naples.

Bianca

Napoleon

Margherita

We are all well aware of what margherita pizza is but where did it come from?having made the first two pizzas Raphael decided on a third one it was to consist of tomato sauce mozzarella cheese and basil,on the day of the royal visit queen margherita sampled all three pizzas and liked them all but liked the third one the most,because of her visit Raphael named the pizza margherita after the queen and that's how the margherita pizza came about and it is the pizza used as a base for all other pizzas and is most popular in the western world outside of Italy.

And finally we get to the most important part the day excursion to Pompeii,Pompeii was engulfed by lava from the eruption of mt Vesuvius(79A.D),thankfully the lava helped preserve the city of Pompeii and with over two hundred years work excavating the site we are beginning to get a better insight to how they lived in 79AD as you will see in the following photographs of the streets , ruins, houses,shops and theatres the town was quiet self sufficient and also there were remains of public swinning pools and steam baths as well as bars and Brothels(10).Also the remains of 25 bakeries,46 drinking wells.the city of Pompeii had running water connected 20yrs B.C The water was distributed through lead pipes,which are still visible.unaware of the lead poisoning aspect people were known to have gone mad(not just peasants but royalty also(Nero) also suffered

from the amount of lead in there digestive system. There are also remains and evidence pointing to the belief restaurants existed as far back as 79 A.d in Italy. You will clearly see the 4 well terracotta style hot food storage. You will see that there were four pots and as described earlier the diet consisted of bread , grains, pulses and fish sauces. This is where the food was kept warm for hours. Stone ovens, wheel grooves,functioning water, mosaic floors ceilings.

Being a port town, Pompeii was a thriving business town. The land was some of the most fertile in Italy and Europe. The excavated site is now about 9 kl from the port.This shows how far back the lava forced the sea. AS said earlier the last explosion was 1944. The volcano Vesuvius is still active today and takes 30 - 70 yrs roughly to erupt.Experts say it will explode again and the most notice anyone will be given is 3days max. They had a trial evacuation last year in  Napoli . There are 600,000 people living in the area and the army said it will take 4-5 weeks to evacuate them.So its just another catastrophe waiting to happen.



So getting away from pizza etc, here is a wonderful idea for an afternoon snack with crisp croistini.
1  Camembert cheese (250 gramme)
2 Basil leaves
2-3 sun dried tomatoes
white wine
2 teaspoon pesto.
1 roisti pan
2 tsp Calvados

Cut Camembert in  half length ways. Place one half in roisti pan. Finely shred basil leaves and sun dried tomatoes . Place in centre of cheese. Brush with basil pesto and pour some white wine onto cheese also. Place other Camembert on top. Lightly press down, and bake in the oven at 180 c for ten minutes.  Remove from the oven and flambé with calvados. Eat with crisp croistini





So my next destination on my food travels was to be france , keen fan of molecular cooking ,
and Brillant Savarins "physiology of taste". So the opportunity has arisen to be representative for Ireland and the U.k,  in the Paris food trip 2014 . So I said to my self why not give it a go . What motivation do you need to enter a competition of this calibre  to go to Paris the home of cooking, the Eifle Tower and the Louvre. The chance to meet fellow food enthusiasts and taste the delicacies that Paris has to offer, and also the chance of meeting esteemed chefs and also the idea of a michelin star meal is appetizing also.

So come on vote for me to be your Irish and English  representative in the Gourmandize food trip 2014.

You wont be dissapointed.

Molecular Gastronomy. Food/Science or both.

Molecular Gastronomy . Food ,science or both ?

 Molecular gastronomy is the consequence of the linkage of gastronomy to science in the title and content of Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin’s Physiology of taste (1825),. The science of food, which Brillat Savarin called gastronomy, was initiated earlier by chemists in the Age of Enlightenment, (the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), and belongs to the history of science. The kitchen was a laboratory like any other for famous doctor and pioneering chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. In Germany, Justus von Liebig, working in the Age of Positivism, applied meat extracts to soups that still bear his name. The test tubes were pots and pans.

The application of science to domestic and restaurant cooking has developed into the new science of molecular gastronomy- the application of scientific principles to the understanding and improvement of gastronomic food preparation  Molecular gastronomy has been defined as a field that attempts to link chemistry to culinary science, to explain transformations that occur during cooking, and to improve culinary methods through a better understanding of the underlying chemical composition of food. The term was coined in the late 1980’s by the British physicist Nicholas Kurti and the French food scientist and former journalist Herve This, who felt that “empirical knowledge and tradition were as important in cooking as rational understanding”. Information revealed through the practice of molecular gastronomy research can be applied by cooks to improve their cooking, as it explains various reasons why things happen when cooking- for instance, why a souffle rises. Knowing this information can enable a cook to create optimum conditions for the rising of a soufflé, based on the science behind the transformation of the ingredients during cooking.

Nicholas Kurti was a professor of physics at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University. An eminent scientist, best known for his work in low temperature physics, in his latter years he turned much of his attention to organising workshops and writing articles on food and cooking. Kurti had always had an enthusiasm for cooking. During the Second World War, he would store his weekly wartime ration of meat in the laboratory deep freeze until he had accumulated enough to be able to invite his friends around for dinner. Kurti was famous for the experiments he demonstrated in lectures, one of the most famous being to the Royal Institute of Great Britain in 1969. he demonstrated the advantages of using hypodermic syringes to put rum into mince pies., how a vacuum pump could be used to make meringues and the benefits of monitoring the inside temperature of a soufflé using a thermocouple.

‘Is it not quite amazing that today we know more about the temperature distribution in the atmosphere of the planet Venus than in the centre of our soufflé’?”

Molecular gastronomy’s form has largely been  determined   by a series of meetings between chefs, scientists and food writers held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily over the course of the last 15- 20 years.      meetings on the science of cooking were set in motion by Elizabeth, who had also  studied at the London Cordon Bleu and ran a cookery school in Berkeley, California. Her first husband was a physicist, and she accompanied him to scientific conferences and counted many physicists as friends.

These meetings were founded by the late Nicholas Kurti following an initial suggestion from Elizabeth Thomas. 

Molecular gastronomy’s form has largely been determined by a series of meetings between chefs, scientists and food writers held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily over the course of the last 15- 20 years. These meetings were founded by the late Nicholas Kurti following an initial suggestion from Elizabeth Thomas.. The  meetings on the science of cooking were set in motion by Elizabeth, who had also  studied at the London Cordon Bleu and ran a cookery school in Berkeley, California. Her first husband was a physicist, and she accompanied him to scientific conferences and counted many physicists as friends.

 Elizabeth attended a meeting in Erice.She was a devoute advocate of low temperature cooking, as was Kurti. It is actually not a new invention. The English scientist Benjamin Thompson described in the 18^th century how a joint of meat could be left in a drying oven over night and how he was surprised when, next morning, the meat was found to be fully cooked and very tender. Kurti repeated the experiment, leaving a 2kg lamb joint in an oven at 80 degrees Celsius. After 8.5 hours, both the inside and outside temperature of the lamb were around 75 and the meat was tender and juicy .

Together with the French chemist Herve This, Nicholas Kurti felt that the gap between food science and cooking at home and in restaurants was becoming too large. It was necessary to invent a new discipline. He proposed “molecular gastronomy”, but Kurti, being a physicist insisted that “and physical” should be added. “Molecular and physical gastronomy”. After Kurti died, the files on the new discipline have simply become known as molecular gastronomy.

 Definitions of Molecular Gastronomy

Mmolecular gastronomy is an emerging school of cooking that emphasises the science of cuisine- like understanding why meat is best slow-cooked at 58° C”. 

Molecular gastronomy has also been defined as a field that ‘attempts to link chemistry to culinary science, to explain transformations that occur during cooking and to improve culinary methods through a better understanding of the underlying chemical composition of food.’

Herve This defines molecular gastronomy by distinguishing between cooking and gastronomy. “The first is the preparation of food, whereas the latter is the knowledge of whatever concerns mans nourishment. In essence, this does not concern food fashions or how to prepare luxury food- such as tournedos Rossini, canard a l’orange or lobster orientale- but rather an understanding of food; and for the more restricted, “molecular gastronomy”, it is the chemistry and physics behind the preparation of any dish; for example, why a mayonnaise becomes firm or why a soufflé swells.”

Tthe application of science to domestic and restaurant cooking has developed into the new science of molecular gastronomy- the application of scientific principles to the understanding and improvement of gastronomic food preparation.”

In 2008 Oxford University Press describes molecular gastronomy as the art and practice of cooking using scientific methods to create new or unusual dishes: Molecular gastronomy combines science with the art of cooking.

In general, the field of molecular gastronomy may be considered as that part of food science that focuses on home and culinary eating changes and cooking phenomena.  

It should be mentioned also that chefs involved in experimental cuisine are not necessarily aware of the scientific principles that support the new dishes that they are creating and that the scientific approach of molecular gastronomy may help to provide information that chefs can use to better understand the processes during the creation of foods

 Adoption and Repudiation of the Term “Molecular Gastronomy”

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the term started to be used to describe a new style of cooking where chefs were exploring novel possibilities in the kitchen by embracing science , technological advances in equipment and various natural gums and hydrocolloids produced by the food processing industry. It has since been used to describe the cooking of many famous chefs such as Pierre Gagniere, Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Homaro Cantu and Grant Achatz. Adria is one chef amongst others who has set up his own laboratory El Taller in which to explore these possibilities. 

Molecular cooking is also emerging in restaurants like WD-50, The Fat Duck, El Bulli and Alinea, a style of cooking that uses ingredients developed for industrial food production. Molecular gastronomy meshes scientific research with cooking. The media have sent shock waves throughout the globe, describing that the style is futuristic and flashy 

. Descriptions and photos of the most eye catching dishes, most drastic techniques, and most outlandish new textures have spread through industry rags, and eventually into magazines and television, leaving us with a skewed understanding. 

In 2005, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Flavour, Gastronomy and Culinary Arts was formed in Reims, France, to promote gastronomy and molecular gastronomy. Universities in many countries, such as the Netherlands, Argentine and Denmark have set up professorships in this discipline. He further asserts that despite this knowledge and interest, mistakes are still being made. In 2002, the media described some chefs as “molecular gastronomists” which is obviously wrong because chefs create food and not knowledge. The confusion was caused in part by the scientific programme which included technological applications and education. Nicholas Kurti and Herve This agreed that molecular gastronomy was science so they excluded the educational and technological elements.

Scientists preferred appellation for this new culinary style is not favoured everywhere and French Laundry chef Thomas Keller said that molecular gastronomy is a label coined by the media. He prefers to call it contemporary cuisine. ‘I think it’s an unfortunate term’,  ‘It doesn’t really describe accurately what people are doing or what their approach is. A lot of people doing cooking of that type don’t like to be associated with that term’. ‘These chefs are right’  ‘They do not do molecular gastronomy because molecular gastronomy is science not cooking. Some can apply the results of molecular gastronomy; some just change the ingredients, methods or tools, and its only modernisation of culinary techniques’.

 Ferran Adria cites “…The biggest lie out there in terms of cooking”  ‘The world of food has changed a great deal in modern times. Change has come fast over the last decade. Along with many other developments, a new approach to cooking has emerged in restaurants around the globe, including our own. We feel that this approach has been widely misunderstood, both inside and outside our profession. Certain aspects of it are over emphasised and sensationalised, while others are being ignored. We believe that this is an important time in cooking, and wish to clarify the principles and thoughts that actually guide us’.  Adria  further added that ‘the disciplines of food chemistry and food technology are valuable sources of information and ideas for all cooks. Even the most straightforward traditional preparation can be strengthened by the understanding of its ingredients and methods, and chemists have been helping cooks for hundreds of years. The fashionable term “molecular gastronomy” was introduced relatively recently, in 1992, to name a particular academic workshop for scientists and chefs on the basic food chemistry of traditional dishes. That workshop did not influence our approach, and the term “molecular gastronomy” does not describe our cooking or indeed any style of cooking’.

 Misapplication of term ‘molecular gastronomy’

The term molecular gastronomy has been used in the culinary arts and in particular by the media and journalists to describe a cooking style adopted by some chefs that is characterised by its reliance on principles, techniques and practices superficially associated with the sciences and with food technology as applied within the industry.  

The phrase is often misused by the media to refer to chefs who apply techniques developed by scientists to their own style of cooking. Although a confusion of terminology, the link of molecular gastronomy with the practice of cooking follows the natural progression of bench research to practical applications that This and Kurti foresaw when they proposed the new discipline The innovations of Nouvelle Cuisine in the 1970’s found their place in evolution in culinary arts such as techniques like hot gels, unusual starches- without being dogged by the ungainly and inaccurate term molecular gastronomy. ‘It is the new cuisine but we stopped referring to Nouvelle Cuisine as that’.

 Confusion with the Term molecular gastronomy

There is a real concern within the culinary community as to whether the term ‘molecular gastronomy’ should be redefined or not. Gastronomy is the study of the relationship between food and culture and molecular gastronomy does not really cover these elements. ‘Molecular’ in molecular gastronomy has a definition similar to that as it does in molecular biology. The similarity is intentional because physics and chemistry are at the centre of this discipline  the term creates artificial barriers. “Molecular makes it sound very complicated and gastronomy makes it sound elitist”. A differentiation should be made between cooking and gastronomy. Cooking means preparing dishes and gastronomy, according to the promoter of the word (Brillat Savarin), means intelligent knowledge of whatever concerns mans nourishment. When it comes to the study of chemical and physical transformations involved in cooking, then the term molecular gastronomy applies. Why not “molecular cooking”?.

 Cooking is a craft, an art–not a science.When food is presented as if it is science or invokes images of it being created in a laboratory, diners tend to get nervous. ‘I think the problem with the term “molecular gastronomy” is that it implies teeny-tiny portions of the unfamiliar, and in America (and many other cultures around the world), we have been taught to believe that the definition of good dining or a good meal is that which makes you full. Reminded of the days when chefs identified with “nouvelle cuisine” began to get annoyed when the label was applied to their style; and arguments followed about the meaning of the term and how it did or did not apply to one or another. The philosophical conceits of nouvelle cuisine were so radical at changing the appearance of haute cuisine and the socioeconomic context for its adoption were long lasting, that a lot more than the name would have to change for it to go for good.

 Objectives of Molecular Gastronomy

Objectives for molecular gastronomy as reformed by Herve This which are to explore scientifically: (a) the artistic component of cooking, (b) the technical component of cooking, i.e. the science behind recipes (applying the concepts of precisions, referring to details in a recipe, and definitions referring to main points in a recipe, (c) the social component of cooking.

A subject which is concerned with the whole process of the preparation of food, from raw ingredients to the actual dish on the plate. Molecular Gastronomy encompasses such diverse issues as:

• How and why we evolved our particular taste and flavour sense organs and our general food likes and dislikes?
• How do production methods affect the eventual flavour and texture of food ingredients?
• How are these ingredients changed by different cooking methods?
• Can we devise new cooking methods that produce unusual and improved results of texture and flavour?
• How do our brains actually interpret the signals from all our senses to tell us the “flavour” of food?
• How is our enjoyment of food affected by other influences such as the environment in which we eat the food, our mood, etc?

Initially molecular gastronomy had five aims: (a) to collect and investigate old wives tales about cooking; (b) to model and examine recipes; (c) to introduce new tools; (d) to invent new dishes using knowledge from previous three aims; (e) and to use the appeal of food to market science. Today it is easy to see that this scientific module was misleading and had failures.   The initial objectives were a major mistake because introducing new tools and inventing new dishes are technological, not scientific and to use the appeal of food to promote science is political.Tthe scientific programme became clearer when reduced to two aims which are to model definitions and to collect and scrutinise culinary precisions; however, this was soon found insufficient because the main aim in cooking is to produce food, which is art and not techniques.

Another objective for the molecular gastronomy community is ensuring that developments in food preparation at the gastronomic level filter down into the domestic arena, where it is compared to the effect of the Grand Prix racing on the motor industry. It is also believed that developments in top restaurants, such as new cooking methods, and healthier dishes will filter into the general food industry 

 Examples of Molecular Gastronomy in Culinary Arts. 

Recipes are the most important written form of culinary knowledge, and they traditionally consist of a definition: for example, a soufflé is a foamy product that swells during cooking, and crumples once someone pokes a knife or fork into it; or a mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil in an egg yolk, pepper, salt and vinegar. In general these definitions are usually mixed with methods and materials. Answering questions can correct a mistake, using knowledge to improve the cooking process or even invent new dishes. One example of how physics and chemistry can lead to new ways of cooking is provided by an egg. If an egg is heated, water evaporates, the proteins denature and polymerise to enclose water and the end result is a cooked egg. An alternative way to do this is to use alcohol because it denatures proteins so the same result is achieved by adding liquor to a raw egg. Similarly the scientific proven way to obtain an airy soufflé is to heat it from below, so evaporation of water pushes the contents upwards. That is simple physics but it can help us to make better food.

By sampling molecules and learning the chemical connections between them, Heston Blumenthal went off on the creative journey of flavour pairings. White chocolate and caviar, foie gras and jasmine, asparagus and licorice which all have molecular commonalities that keep them from clashing and when properly paired can lead to eclectic new tastes. Food scientists know that red cabbage and mustard contain mustard oil, but it was Blumenthal who introduced us to Pommery-mustard ice cream in red-cabbage gazpacho. According to Blumenthal, another amazing discovery was made in the centre for food science in the Netherlands and involved our sense of smell and how we all taste foods slightly differently.

 Herve This came up with a formal system of classification for what happens when foods are mixed, baked, fried, sautéed in lime juice etc; it shows, for example, how the 451 classical French sauces divide down into 23 distinct types. More importantly the system allows the creation and pairing of large numbers of novel and potentially tasty dishes by generating a formula describing the physical microstructure of a previously nonexistent dish, he then collaborated with Pierre Gagnaire to contribute real ingredients resulting in a bitter orange, scallop, and smoked tea dish that delighted Gagnaires . 

Examples of new food creations from the famous El Bulli in Spain which include shiny green olives served on a spoon, to be eaten in one bite, but it isn’t an olive at all. The gushing sphere bursts into a mouthful of intense olive juices. Golden eggs encased in delicate caramel dissolve and release a mouthful of tangerine bloom essence, which attack the senses. Other foods from El Bulli are plump mussels wrapped in a seawater jelly, served with tiny cubes of apple and finished with an intense consommé of potatoes and ham; a dessert beautifully crafted in hummingbird shape which is draped across a plate, its long beak is formed from caramel, and the head is filled with sweet liquid sesame. One cracks the head and the contents spill over fruit sorbets, ice creams and jellies that form its body and wings. These examples are good practical ones of a successful interplay between science and gastronomy, where art and science are systematically blended together.

New dishes have been named after famous Chemists by the molecular gastronomy workshop. They have been produced on the basis of results of molecular gastronomy. Examples include Gibbs, which is where an egg white is whipped with oil and a white emulsion obtained; Vauquelin, a foam resulting from egg white and added orange juice; and Baume a coagulated egg that has been left in alcohol for a month .

                 

 Molecular  Mixology

Chemistry is not a word that is associated with cocktails.More bartenders are applying the science of molecular gastronomy in the search for an improved drink, for example mixing alcohol with liquid nitrogen, chlorides and alginates. The result: a Mojito mist to be sprayed instead of being sipped, a Hurricane that erupts like a school science experiment and whiskey marshmallows. The  name is a twist on molecular gastronomy, a term for the application of scientific principles to cooking. Many chefs and bartenders complained that ‘molecular mixology’ is not a fully accurate designation for a trend that is less about molecular science and more about techniques that chefs are discovering in their kitchens.The chemical cocktail movement grew from a symposium sponsored by Dutch distiller Bols in 2005.

 Proponents of Molecular Gastronomy

‘As science has gradually percolated into the world of cooking, cooking has been drawn into the world of academic and industrial science’. One very effective force behind this movement was Nicholas Kurti, a physicist and food lover at the University of Oxford as previously mentioned. At the age of 84, in 1992 Kurti nudged civilisation along by organising the International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy at Erice, Sicily, where professional cooks and scientists worked together for the first time to advance gastronomy, and the making and appreciation of foods to the highest quality. .

Harold McGee is a freelance writer based in California. His writing about the science of food and cooking since 1979 has been a huge influence on molecular gastronomy enthusiasts such as Heston Blumenthal. ‘Harold McGee’s book was the single biggest catalyst of the path that I am following now’, Blumenthal says. McGee is a living library of food science and basic science books and magazines and modestly describes his work as gathering the information that’s relevant to restaurants and home cooks and translating that information into plain English for those cooks. In addition to the book “On Food and Cooking” he has also published The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore .

 Among the chefs who make use of molecular gastronomy, many are famous: for example Christian and Philippe Conticini, Bernard Leprice, Michael Roth and Pierre Herme, all from Paris; Ferran Adria from Rosas in Spain; Pierre Gagnaire who has restaurants in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo; Heston Blumenthal in the U.K. and Emile Jung in Strasbourg, Germany.

Several highly regarded chefs, the most famous being Heston Blumenthal in England and Ferran Adria in Spain, experiment with industrial and laboratory tools – gelling agents from seaweeds and bacteria, non sweet sugars, pressurised gases and liquid nitrogen to bring new forms of pleasure to the table..

In contrast to the Slow Food movement, molecular gastronomy employs modern scientific processes and Ferran Adria is largely responsible for the direction the movement has. Adria has a laboratory in Barcelona called El Taller that works on new creations and markets bright and new ideas to trendy hotel chains and food processors. He sells a range of stainless steel cutlery called ‘Faces’ and metal tableware, called ‘Snack’, inspired by Frank Gehry, the architect of the Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao. Adria argued that traditional cooking did not bring out the full flavours and textures of their natural ingredients, of which Spain has in abundance. Adria has set about deconstructing dishes such as tortilla and presenting the Spanish omelette as individually delicious parts of the sum, rather than a tasty sum of the parts.

Heston Blumenthal’s career has taken some remarkable turns. He is the winner of the 2004 Catey Chef Award and this book taught chef has been awarded three Michelin stars at The Fat Duck Restaurant. Ferran Adria described Blumenthal as “the future” while introducing him at the Madrid Fusion Gastro Summit, and two months later he was named winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2003. Currently Blumenthal is involved with Charles Spence of Oxford University doing work combining menthol and chilli. He is also working on developing pastilles with liquid centres at Nottingham University alongside Tony Blake who is a professor in the School of Biosciences and has been interested in food and cooking since he was a child.

Blumenthal has certainly built up an amazing alliance of like minded people including leading scientists. While he is willing to share his knowledge and spread the word on molecular gastronomy he laments the fact that there are still individuals, namely British journalists, dragging their feet..

Critiques of Molecular Gastronomy

Molecular gastronomy seems to be more of a fad, like most trends, rather than a revolution. From the beginning, some critics have scorned a way of cooking that relies too heavily on technology and often chooses form over substance.

Joseph Maria Fonalleras, a prominent writer and columnist said Ferran Adria has gone over the top, ‘ talking about dishes as if he were discussing mathematics rather than cooking. Those who watch how Ferran Adria uses a screwdriver to uncoil a thread of sugar to make it into a ring will split their sides with laughter’. People will be convinced that the nueva cocina has gone too far. Adria has also been criticised by Santi Santamaria, a culinary traditionalist, who has three Michelin stars for his restaurant Can Fabes. Kingstone,  Santamaria takes aim at Ardria and his disciples in his new book The Kitchen Laid Bare for their use of synthetic additives- gels, thickening agents and preservatives at the expense of locally produced ingredients. ‘I believe the interference of industry in haute cuisine has reached new levels, in part because of your work’ writes Sanatmaria in an open letter to Adria. Adria’s goal  is to increase sensuality through taste, sight and texture as well as originality. Like any skilled artist, his focus is on originality and the authentic, of whatever type of food is being created. Nutritionists agree, pointing out that the additives used to create El Bulli’s trademark foams and airs have all been approved by the European Union, and that there is no health issue as one would have to consume large amounts to have an adverse reaction. Adria argues ‘that when Santamaria talks about industrial products, bear in mind that sugar is an industrial product, as is the best wine in the world; its crazy to suggest that these additives are the biggest health issue of our time; there are thousands of problems in day to day nutrition, which are much more important than the fact that a handful of chefs are doing something a bit different’. By feeding the hunger for novel, bigger than life flavours, Adria is encouraging a type of techni-colour food spectrum much beyond nature’s scope. No cooking is natural, but as trend-setting chefs and food processing keep widening the gap between raw ingredients and the finished dish, the consumer’s ability and desire to create tempting food at home continues to atrophy.  ‘Slow foodies, have no fear. No one will be making foams in forty years, but plenty of people will be enjoying fresh local mushrooms, simply sautéed’.

Fredy Girardet, a retired Swiss chef who critiques avant garde cooking techniques cites ‘we need to finish with these mish-mashed, sweet tasting avant garde dishes, where nothing is identifiable, neither texture, nor freshness, nor the original taste of the product’.  He also thinks that this type of culinary experimentation does not bode well for the future of haute cuisine if young chefs take this path as their model.  

Marco Pierre White has also hit out at the concept of molecular gastronomy, claiming the style is all about attracting column inches. Speaking at Caterers  Chef Conference he says of the scientific approach to cooking ‘I just don’t get it, what does it mean? Does it make food taste any better?’ (Harmer 2008).

The meat and potato enthusiasts who dominate the dining scene remain sceptical and dining competition is fierce. Those chefs involved in molecular gastronomy are indeed setting themselves apart from the community. The question is whether their mixing of haute cuisine and science will stand the test of time . Innovation should be embraced but putting your menu so far out on the edge of reasonable tastes makes it very prone to falling of the precipice completely.

Fundamentally, however, both sides claim to be in pursuit of a certain purity and even authenticity

 Molecular Gastronomy- Art, Science or Both?

Nico Landenis unequivocally declares his deep conviction that cooking is a science and presentation is an art. The well known food critic, Luca Vercelloni, says: ‘cooking is very different from art…Recipes are not masterpieces to be exhibited in galleries…Chefs must be above all skilful executors’, rather than inspired creators’ (Arouh, 2005). 

The synergy between cooking and science is dependent on sensible integration of the two disciplines. Home cooks are about to learn what McDonalds and Kraft foods have known for more than fifty years: placing food over heat is science and not art. The resistance to food science has grown stronger with the local, organic and slow food movements of late. Ironically, such gastronomic science has reached its apogee at the same time as its near opposite, the preservationist Slow Food movement, which seeks to preserve old traditions and methods of cooking. Each culinary movement is reacting to the mass food culture: One rejects industrial food in favour of authenticity; the other uses industrial food processing techniques to create the rare realm of haute cuisine.

 Is molecular gastronomy the same as “culinology”? Clearly there is knowledge behind the enterprise of culinology but as well as knowledge there is money and communication. Documents issued by Universities that teach Culinology indicate that it involves some elements which allow chefs to cook differently and therefore culinology is cooking and not molecular gastronomy. The latter must be considered a scientific discipline because it is about understanding and knowledge (looking for mechanisms and establishing modes of operation).  Thanks to science, which teaches us that an egg yolk deserves to be the object of curiosity and admiration, we have no need to be bored in a kitchen. Molecular gastronomy he adds does not aim solely at attaining pure knowledge, as it seeks also to give practical knowledge a sound foundation by explaining why successful recipes work and why some mistakes happen. For example, if one enquires why lumps occur when flour is placed in a hot liquid, you will be led to useful conclusions that will allow certain culinary practices to be refined.

 One does not have to be a scientist to be a great chef, the latest food trends in restaurants such as El Bulli is all about food as theatre rather than food as just food. Adria, states that he has never ascribed any scientific origin to his creations, they have come about from a purely culinary quest: observation and curiosity have been part and parcel of his activity. For example, in 1998 when it was discovered that agar-agar could withstand high temperatures, hot jellies were created based on nothing but observation.

Adria, says ‘I think what we have here is a marketing operation and the public should not be tricked into believing that molecular cuisine is a cooking style’.’ To cook well, we must learn (its history, techniques, products, tradition and innovation, culinary processes, etc.). Then, think, discuss, try out, reflect, choose…And then constantly question anything we assume is true’.’ And if in the meantime we need to resort to science or history books or any other creative discipline, at least we shall acquire new information to reinforce our culinary philosophy’. Bl ‘Tradition is the base which all cooks who aspire to excellence must know and master, our open approach builds upon the best that tradition has to offer’. As to the methods they employ, ‘It is all just cooking’. ‘We do not pursue novelty for its own sake, We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen and other non traditional methods but these do not define our cooking’. Blumenthal highlights that they are a few of the many tools that they are fortunate to have available as they strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.

 Blumenthal  offers that eating engages all the senses as well as the mind and that preparing and serving food could possibly be the most complex of the performing arts

 ‘science looks for mechanisms of phenomena, whereas technology is using scientific results to enhance a technique or a craft. As all recipes are composed of three parts (the technically useless details, the definitions, and the culinary exact measurements), molecular gastronomy should study all these parts, but only from a scientific point of view’.

 Gap between Science and Culinary Arts

The manufacturing food industry has recently welcomed chefs into the business causing more than a few fireworks in the product development laboratories as creativity clashes against the disciplined application of scientific principles. Chefs bring a unique viewpoint to the food industry as they do not see the food through analytical or scientific eyes. They are creative and artistic individuals. While scientists can give benefits to cooks, the relationship is also reciprocal- scientists can gain from the skills, knowledge and innovation of chefs. They are continuously contributing with new ideas, some of which are very interesting and motivating from an industrial point of view. Chefs working with scientists give the chefs opportunities that are rarely possible without this collaboration, for example, access to processing equipment and analytical device; further suggesting that it is important for chefs to develop a scientific way of thinking, i.e. a generic approach to problems rather than an approach very specific to a particular meaning. Many chefs fail to realise the complexity of product development for products to be sold in retail stores, as opposed to food service dishes. Corporate chefs will need to know how to scale up products they develop for manufacturing and what guidelines will make the food a success and be cost effective.

The intersection of molecular gastronomy and the culinary arts is a natural meeting place of the two cultures: scientific rationalism and the creative arts. Few of the general public understand the scientific composition of food. However, scientists are well placed to communicate such knowledge to society. By capitalising upon the potential for the general public to listen to chefs, a bridge may be developed to educate people about a healthier and improved manner of eating based on. With experts from different disciplines such as history, culture, and industrial design etc, are essential for progress in cooking, in particular collaboration with the food industry and scientists which have already brought about fundamental advances. ‘Sharing this knowledge among cooking professionals has contributed to this evolution’.

Ferran Adria’s collaboration with scientist and gourmet Pere Castells, resulted in the setting up of The Alicia Foundation and so managed to exchange ideas and build up work structure. One specific result of this partnership was the publication of a Scientific and Gastronomic Lexicon, a tool designed to bridge the gap between cooking and science.

                 

 Future of Molecular Gastronomy

‘What is the future of food once we start to explore it scientifically’? ‘The difficultly with the future is that it is hard to predict,. We should avoid making the same mistakes that French chemist Marcellin Berthelot made about a century ago; he predicted that the success of organic chemistry would allow us to abandon traditional food and by the year 2000, eat nutritive tablets instead. He was obviously wrong as humans are living organisms, with an extremely sophisticated sensory apparatus that has evolved over millions of years to detect odour, taste, consistency, temperature and more’

It seems that collaborations with chefs are vital. The advantages for the chefs are clear: new dishes, new ways of preparing existing dishes, new techniques. ‘For the chef, new horizons open through the understanding of some physics, chemistry and the psychology of food’

The American culinary scene, Sarkar and Cantu unequivocally predict that within ten years, half the restaurants in the United States will offer that type of cuisine, and chefs that are not adopting it will be left behind. What they agree on, however, is that molecular gastronomy will not enter the domestic arena, under any label, anytime soon. Professor This says that certain facts that come out of his experiments, such as being able to make a chocolate mousse without using egg whites or that the temperature of the eggs and the oil does not matter when making mayonnaise, could save cooks time and/or money and might transfer into home kitchens, but not on a large scale. Lack of special equipment, such as emersion circulators, dehydrators and carbonators impede home cooks.

Nowaday’s we are just beginning to realise the important roles all our senses play in affecting the ways in which our brains interpret flavour. But we have a great deal to learn before we fully understand the complexities of how we taste food and perceive and appreciate flavour and texture. This journey of discovery which is the new science of molecular gastronomy will be a stimulating and exciting one. In Chicago, Homaro Cantu’s technological explorations at his laboratory, “Moto” have  attracted the attention of NASA with whom Cantu now has a contract for space ready food.

New technologies leave their mark on another sphere, which will play a main role in the future. Flavours and odours are synthesised in laboratories for example, Swiss perfume giant Givaudan, is contributing to the elaboration of more than 20 thousand artificial odours (300 strawberry only), and biologists from the multinational company organised a trip to the Madagascar forests in search of molecules from which new aromas could be obtained.

Technologies such as microwave ovens were developed due to research in food technology at American space agency (NASA).  The immediate task is to make products stay fresher for longer- “products, which can be kept for months without losing their nutritional properties and vitamin quality”, claims Michele Perchonok from NASA. Techniques that are used include pulsing electric fields, and high frequency sterilisation. A sandwich prepared in this way has turned out to be edible in seven years. The results can be useful for a mission to Mars although it seems nobody has tasted the sandwich yet .

Other molecular gastronomists make the future seem exciting, especially if we can control food production through better chemistry. The “meaning” of food seems now to be reduced to its molecules, without adequate attention to the possible emergent properties that may be produced. Charles Spence cites  that the future of gastronomy has great potential; to date; many of the advances in food design have come from a trial and error approach.

 The future seems to promise many new advances in the design and preparation of foods that are based on a better understanding of how the brain works. Any better understanding of how the brain puts together what it sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels, can help us design novel food experiences that more effectively stimulate the senses. McGee, (2004) adds that new emphasis now is on flavours and on some particular molecules which create flavour.

Prediction of Molecular Gastronomy for the Domestic Arena

Fewer people actually do cooking- because of prepared dishes at supermarkets, meal preparation kitchens and restaurants will become even cheaper- the remaining brave cooks are going a little science mad. This paradigm shift will not be such a big deal in practice as for example an oven is very much an advanced science gadget and people use meat thermometers. Practices will step up a little by replacing liquid measuring cups with more accurate dry weight scales; vacuum sealer and a Crock pot that stays at precise temperatures will enable cooks to sous vide meat (which is cooking in a bag for a short time at high temperatures); cooks can learn how to use agar-agar and xanthan gum (just better versions of gelatine and cornflour, really); and a review of some high school chemistry will also be useful.

Conclusion

Molecular gastronomy is still relatively new, constantly changing and subject to misinterpretations in the media and lacking a clear definition. However, in summary molecular can be summarised as a discipline involving the study of physical and chemical processes that happen in cooking. It investigates the mechanisms behind the transformation of ingredients and investigates the artistic, social and technical aspects of culinary phenomena in general.

Why choose me. ?
 I am a food enthusiast and innovator with numerous accolades and awards.As you can guess I am also a molecular gastronomy enthusiast.  The blog I composed gives people the option to decide for them selves what exactly molecular gastronomy is or isn't. For me personally I have taken molecular gastronomy to be both a food discipline and a science.

So to back up my opinion I have taken a truly Traditional Irish dish and have reconstructed in a molecular fashion using the new ingredients and techniques available at my disposal.

The dish. " Boiled bacon and Cabbage with parsley sauce.

The reconstruction involves the use of iso whippers, waterbath for precision cooking, hand blender for airs, emulsions created using agar agar , cabbage juice and olive oil. Also potato Gnocchi cooked in an alginate bath. The dish is to demonstrate by embracing new Phenomenons like "Molecular Gastronomy" that we can explore and do almost anything we want with old dishes(by transforming them into new creations)with the aid of the equipment, techniques and ingredients at our disposal.

The opportunity to meet professionals of different gastronomic fields, to savour the  delights and traditional cuisine served in different ways. To promote Ireland in a Molecular Gastronomique way . To try and promote the fact that we are not miles apart from the elite when it comes to Gastronomy and Molecular Gastronomy.
And most of all to show that "molecular gastronomy" and  new phenomenons  alike should be embraced rather than shunned.

"The future of our generations relies solely on what we feed our children"