The Omnivorous Fish

Sorry about the longtemps between posts, we have been really busy and there hasn’t been much to write about. This post has set off an idea for a book- The Agent may never forgive me.

I’m not going to talk about how much I dislike the website Chowhound; it doesn’t matter. What does matter- for our purposes- is my incomprehension that anyone who cares enough about food to write about it would write the article I saw on Chowhound yesterday. In it, the author lauds the strides made in the science of artificial flavors. This includes natural flavors, but in reality, everything is natural, and since it’s all made or extracted in a laboratory, it’s all artificial. Maybe what they should be called is extrapolated flavors. Extrapolate means taking a guess at something based on a known quantity, like how to make a monkey taste like a banana.

The point is, the whole notion of extrapolated flavors is disingenuous and works against everything good food ought to be. A great meal, almost by definition, is composed of foodstuffs close to their natural state, the furthest away being preserved with other edible items, like salt, vinegar, sugar or (breathable, if not eatable) air. What is good for us about institutionalized foods? What is good for us about stabilizers, chemical preservatives or other additives that merely mimic the taste of wholesome food? The author of the Chowhound article talks about the ethereal experience of unnatural coconut, almost as if the experience is impossible without scientific intervention. Has this person ever tasted a homemade tom ka? A Senegalese coconut flan? For god’s sake, has the man had a slice of German chocolate cake made with freshly grated and toasted coconut? Does that plastic coconut in the bag from the supermarket, covered with icing sugar taste like coconut? No, of course not. Crab meat made out of whitefish tastes like whitefish, not like crab. If you want to taste coconut, maybe you should try eating coconut.

I often hear people say ‘McDonalds has the best fries.’ McDonalds fries, admittedly, are pretty good. They have a team of scientist putting god knows what in them to make sure of that. Do you know how their fries got to be the standard that had to be recreated in a laboratory? Beef tallow. High-tech, huh? If you buy a dense, low-moisture potato, Idaho or russet, for example, and cut it one-quarter inch square by the length of the potato and then fry it slowly in half beef tallow and half peanut oil, until the potato is cooked through, and then drain them, and then fry them again at a higher temperature, you’ll have some of the best fries going right in the privacy of your own home. ‘But, beef tallow,’ you say, ‘that’s so unhealthy.’ Yeah, well, so is eating at McDonalds. Go for a freakin’ walk afterwards.

Processing food strips it of its vitality. It strips vegetables of their urgent greenness and meats of their wholesome character. A wet, paper-white, soft piece of pork, clad in styrofoam is a sad, unhealthy thing to eat, but in American supermarkets, it’s all you’re likely to find. Removing things from the context of where they are grown and the seasons they are grown in distances us from our food, contributes to pollution and the crisis/addiction we have with fossil fuels, reduces our foods’ nutritional value and makes us ready targets for bioterrorism and natural disasters. We simply cannot afford to continue to eat the way American business wants us to. McDonalds wants centralized processing of identical disease-resistant potatoes and fast, cheap slaughter and fabrication of meats that are byproducts of a cruel and hormone-ridden industrial dairy system. Monsanto (one of the world’s largest agritech firms, and member of my Agri-Axis of Evil, along with ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland [even though they give money to PBS]) wants to give it to them. Sysco wants to distribute it and Aaramark wants to serve you whatever McDonalds doesn’t use at the stadium or airport or crappy hotel restaurant.

This is the reality of the flavor industry. It isn’t a geeky guy with three housewives trying to perfect instant banana pudding. The author wants us to go along for the ride that preservatives and flavor agents are a natural part of the way we should be eating, but we shouldn’t buy it. This lax attitude that we should just accept what the industry puts in front of us disguised as food is no different from believing everything our government tells us about terrorism. It is absolutely not natural to tear open a package every time you eat. It is not natural to eat asparagus in January (in the US, anyway). It is not natural to have one variety of corn or rice or potato account for 95% of the crop in the country.

If you haven’t read the article, the weakness of the author’s arguments is no more annoying than in the following summation:

Additives, similarly, will allow the faithful conveyance of a chef’s vision to remote audiences. Much as live musical performance is now a premium experience offered by an elite cadre of musicians (as opposed to a century ago, when people made their own music), the chef’s physical immediacy will be optional. Of course, flavor is just one facet of cuisine; but it’s arguably the hardest part.
The classical culinary arts, executed by trained chefs, won’t completely die off. A few super-talented chefs will serve a small, discerning following (like aficionados who attend chamber music recitals). But the creative team at, say, McDonald’s, will find it easier to project their visions from afar without compromise or degradation. And as they do, chains may become bastions of deliciousness.

Yes, Mr. Leff, without even mentioning your dubious use of the semicolon, please explain to me chemical browning. Browning, you know, that thing you do in a heavy pan with a pure fat that has a high smoke point. Browning, that easy to understand, but difficult to properly execute cooking technique that is inherent to what we recognize as savory food. Oh, you can’t do that. Minimum wage automatons can’t handle that, can they?

Oh, okay, then, then can you give us the formula for seasoning? Oh, you can’t give us quantities for things like salt unless every other ingredient involved has been processed for mineral uniformity, I see. So, for example, a great tomato salad at McDonalds will be impossible.

So good cooking is not only more than flavor, it is an interactive process between ingredients, a cook and the people eating the food. It is, in other words, more than science alone.

The author does make an interesting argument that “molecular gastronomy” is a direct descendant of California and Nouvelle cuisines (close, but distinct relatives), and if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale in Lower Manhattan that you might be in interested in. He claims that “A thimble of frozen artichoke foam is just another way to get diners to appreciate — no, really appreciate! — the to-die-for glories of the artichoke…. The continued insistence that we open our supposedly clouded eyes to the banal has become strictly to-yawn-for.” He severely misses the entire point of nouvelle cuisine here, and, to his credit, takes a ridiculous notion and runs straight ahead with it, hindered neither by reality nor sense. I was unaware that good ingredients have become unpopular. Somebody let Oliveto know they can close.

If the flavor of what you’re eating needs that much help, maybe you shouldn’t be eating it. Scientific advances in food processing make it better for food companies, not for us.

Listening: “Strange Powers” by The Shins