You are what you eat

SCIENCE OF FOOD:The science, the ethics and the art of food are on the menu in a new exhibition at the Science Gallery, writes UNA MULLALLY

EVERYBODY EATS.” It’s this unifying statement from Dr Michael John Gorman, founding director of the Science Gallery in Dublin, that guides their latest exhibition, Edible: The Taste of Things to Come. With foodies becoming increasingly au fait with molecular gastronomy, and science rapidly creating new ways of preserving, manipulating and inventing items of food, the Science Gallery aims to pose bigger questions around the wider implications of what we ingest.

Crossing the fantasy of Willy Wonka with the practicalities of eating, the goriness of experimental food and the inquisitiveness of predicting a future for food is the ambitious objective for the exhibition, which opens next Friday and runs until April 5th.

The gallery commissioned two internationally renowned curators to assemble a team of contributing scientists, artists and restaurateurs. The curators, Cat Kramer and Zack Denfeld, run the Centre for Genomic Gastronomy, an independent research institute that explores and examines the genomes and biotechnologies that make up human food systems.

“Food is such a big topic, so we wanted to get focused,” Denfeld says, adding that there are so many shows about agriculture and how the world feeds people, that with Edible they wanted to focus on actual eating and the role of the eater, “and how what we choose to eat effects different ecosystems.”

Denfeld and Kramer will also be asking whether or not the future of food is a high-tech or low-tech one. On the high-tech side, they’re using a 3D printer with insect powder as a printing material to recreate insects in new shapes. “People don’t eat them because how they look throws them off, so if you can print them into an interesting shape, people might eat it,” Denfeld says. On the low-tech side, they’ve asked grandmothers about how to preserve food without refrigeration.

“I think that we’re all worried about eating too much sugar or fat, and those are really important questions from a personal nutrition viewpoint,” Denfeld explains. “But there’s also the bigger view collectively; how much meat should we be eating because of the impact on water consumption? Should we be looking at the fruit we eat when it’s being shipped to us from exotic locations? Should we be eating food that is sourced more locally? These are all big questions, and we hope the show poses those larger questions.”

A giant inflatable stomach which visitors can explore will be installed at the gallery. Feeding times (admission €3) held twice daily, allow for tasting twists on already unusual recipes, including a kimchi quesadilla and creating a vegan version of ortolan, traditionally a fattened baby bird drowned in Armagnac. There will also be dining experiences (€25-€40) featuring four-course meals created by artists, scientists and chefs.

Seattle Food Geek, the modernist cooking blogger will offer a masterclass in food photography. Dylan Haskins, member of the Science Gallery Leonardo Group (a group of 50 individuals drawn from art, science, design and technology) and Aoife McLysaght will host an evening with author David Rotheberg, exploring his new book Survival of the Beautiful, which questions how some food items have endured because of how they look rather than how they taste, and evolution as determined by beauty as a whole. Sue McGrath will host Fantastic Food and Disgusting Digestion, a family show with hands-on experiments.

Gorman explains why the Science Gallery chose to broach the subject: “When we finished our exhibition on water, Surface Tension, we felt it was a natural progression to move from water to food. Food is an area where the role of science is important, which a lot of people may not be aware of because food is such a intimate thing for all of us. We think it’s important for people to engage with food as more than just consumers, so although you will be able to eat things at the exhibition, it’s also about the impact of the eating choices we make on our environment.”

Gorman says the gallery was keen to involve a large spectrum of people, from scientists working in food science to chefs and restaurants – and to examine the future of food. “We want to get people thinking about their eating decisions, not just from the point of view of ‘is this going to make me get fat?’ To think about more than what they eat, with lots of clear examples of making conscientious decisions around eating, and a much broader range of questions around what we eat.”

If that doesn’t whet your appetite, it will at the very least make you think about food before you down it.

EDIBLE opens next Friday at the Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Trinity College, Dublin 2 and runs until April 5th. Admission free. See sciencegallery.iefor more information

Edible by numbers

1 – The number of countries that consume more beer per capita than Ireland. That would be the Czech Republic

4 – The number of plant crops that make up 50% of all plant crops we eat

5 – The number of colours genetically modified GloFish are available in

12 – The number of Chinese cities that have more eaters than Ireland

20 – The amount of times more olives we eat since the 1970s

500 – The number of years since a time when tomatoes, potatoes, coffee, chocolate, corn, peanuts, tobacco and chilli peppers weren’t available in Europe

2,000 – The number of radiation-bred plant varieties available globally. Ireland is not responsible for any of them

10,000 – The number of Gs you have to centrifuge peas at in order to make pea butter

2,000,000,000 – The number of pigs alive at any time

7,000,000,000 – The world’s chicken population