Posts Tagged ‘Food’
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived”*…
The most under-rated of our senses is also the least understood. But as Yasemin Saplakoglu reports, a better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain…
… Smell is deeply tied with the emotion and memory centers of our brain. Lavender perfume might evoke memories of a close friend. A waft of cheap vodka, a relic of college days, might make you grimace. The smell of a certain laundry detergent, the same one your grandparents used, might bring tears to your eyes.
Smell is also our most ancient sense, tracing back billions of years to the first chemical-sensing cells. But scientists know little about it compared to other senses — vision and hearing in particular. That’s in part because smell has not been deemed critical to our survival; humans have been wrongly considered “bad smellers” for more than a century. It’s also not easy to study.
“It’s a highly dimensional sense,” said Valentina Parma, an olfactory researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “We don’t know exactly how chemicals translate to perception.” But scientists are making progress toward systematically characterizing and quantifying what it means to smell by breaking the process down to its most fundamental elements — from the odor molecules that enter your nose to the individual neurons that process them in the brain.
Several new databases, including one recently published in the journal Scientific Data, are attempting to establish a shared scientific language for the perception of molecular scents — what individual molecules “smell like” to us. And on the other end of the pathway, researchers recently published a study in Nature describing how those scent molecules are translated into a neural language that triggers emotions and memories.
Together, these efforts are painting a richer picture of our strongest memory-teleportation device. This higher-resolution look is challenging the long-held assumption that smell is our least important sense…
[Saplakoglu recounts the history of our understanding of smell; explains the current science on how millions of molecules, often in complex bouquets, enter the nose and are processed by neurons to generate a sense of smell that’s deeply emotional and personal; and explores the ways in which it’s intstrumental in attraction, survival, and memory…]
… Because our sense of smell can be largely subliminal, in surveys many people, given the choice of losing one sense, choose olfaction. But “every day, I experience people sitting in my office and talking about how they are disconnected to the world,” [Thomas] Hummel said. They can’t smell their children or spouses anymore. They cannot detect bad-smelling food or dangerous smoke. They no longer have access to certain memories.
“I know the memory is there, but I don’t have the key to open [it] anymore,” Hummel said. “Life becomes a much more insecure place without a sense of smell in many ways, but you only realize it when it’s gone.”…
Fascinating: “How Smell Guides Our Inner World,” from @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.
* Helen Keller
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As we get to know the nose, we might celebrate the avatar of affecting aromas: today is National Cheese Pizza Day.
“The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.”*…
Five years ago, we marked the passage of Lynn Olver, a reference librarian who pretty much single-handedly created and maintained The Food Timeline: history of human eating habits for 20,000 years. Worried that her life’s work might lie fallow and spoil, her family was searching for a new host.
Happily, one was found. Later in 2020, Virginia Tech University Libraries and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS) offered Virginia Tech as a new home for the physical book collection and the web resource– and the site lives on…
Ever wonder how the ancient Romans fed their armies? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip…and why? So do we!!! Food history presents a fascinating buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts. Some experts say it’s impossible to express this topic in exact timeline format. They are correct. Most foods are not invented; they evolve…
Dive into “The Food Timeline,” courtesy of @vtliberalarts.bsky.social.
See also (the source of the almanac entry below) chef James T. Ehler‘s marvelous FoodReference.com– “on this date” history and more.
(Image above: source)
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As we dig in, we might send healthy birthday greetings to Gilbert Blane; he was born on this date in 1749. A Scottish physician who served on the Sick and Wounded Board of the Admiralty, he instituted health reform in the Royal Navy. Perhaps most memorably, he was largely responsible for requiring citrus juice (lemons, later limes) on all naval vessel to prevent scurvy.
“Nothing scares corporate radio like public radio”*…
These are tough times for those who love (and/or depend on) local radio. The Trump administration has eliminated the federal funding on which many local public stations have depended, and consolidation has “homogenized” local commercial radio. And this, at a time when the civic and cultural news and engagement that local radio provides has never been more important.
Still, community-rooted local radio perserveres. Consider ldial, a curated collection from Adam Scott— a list that let’s you sample some of the best independent and community radio stations in the US (and, ideally, encourages you to find your own local options).
Then, remembering that the best local radio is your local radio, consider supporting your local station(s).
* Tom Petty
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As we tune in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1950 that Hormel registered the name and trademark “Spam” for its canned meat product. It is interesting to note that the company had marketed the product since 1937, and only felt the need to protect the name 13 years later.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”*…
Vice President Teddy Roosevelt uttered that famous line at the Minnesota State Fair in 1901 (a few days before William McKinley was assasinated and Roosevelt became President). While TR was talking about foreign policy, he might well have been describing the fair-goers… at least as they have evolved. There are very few comestibles that one cannot purchase at the fair, chocolate-dipped and/or fried, on a stick.
Fairs have long been a hotbed of culinary creation. To take just one example, the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis introduced the hamburger, the hot dog, peanut butter, iced tea, the club sandwich, cotton candy, and the ice cream cone, among other delights.
Innovation lives on. In advance of this year’s event (August 21-September 1), the Minnesota State Fair is previewing some of the new foods that will be on offer to the roughly 2 million visitors it will host. For example…
And so, so much more.
Via the always enlightening Web Curios, where Matt Muir observes: “On the one hand, food discourse is some of the worst discourse; on the other, it’s impossible not to gawp every year at the astonishing things that North Americans seem able and willing to do with saturated fats and a deepfryer, and to speculate and the deep and significant character flaws that this sort of approach to ‘sustenance’ connotes. THERE IS NO WORLD IN WHICH “a 4 oz. hamburger patty with cheese, pickles and special sauce, sandwiched between two deep-fried peanut butter & grape jelly Uncrustables” [pictured at the top] IS A DESCRIPTION OF A REASONABLE FOODSTUFF! (also, can we just take a moment to consider what has happened to a society in which pre-made crustless sandwiches are a thing? O THE DECLINE OF EMPIRE!)… Would you want to drink this ‘mocktail’? [here] A “Dirty NoTini (lemon, dill pickling spices & olive brine)”? I posit that you would in fact not. ONE OF THESE ‘DISHES’ [here] IS LITERALLY ‘PASTRY SCRAPS WITH SUGAR AND CINNAMON SERVED WITH A SUGAR-BASED DIPPING SAUCE’ FFS! There’s not enough Ozempic in the world, honestly.”
Yeah… but I have to say, the Tandori Chicken Quesdilla sounds pretty good to me…
Browse the entire array of dishes debuting at the Minnesota State Fair: “New Foods for 2025.”
Special bonus: not related (it’s a pointer to– and comment on– a piece in Lit Hub), but also from Web Curios:
Did Shakespeare Write Hamlet Stoned?: To be clear, per Betteridge’s Law [see here], the answer to this is very clearly ‘no, of course he fcuking didn’t, IF HE EVEN WROTE HAMLET IN THE FIRST PLACE (lol)’, but I am including this because the thinness of the argument here presented made me laugh quite a lot – the entire piece hangs on two lines drawn from Sonnet 76, subjected to the following RIGOROUS ANALYSIS: “Many scholars believe the ‘noted weed’ in which the author finds ‘invention’ is a reference to cannabis and its ability to stimulate creativity. Some also think the phrase ‘every word doth almost tell my name’ is a sly reference to the fact that ‘shake’ (as in Shakespeare) is another word for cannabis—specifically, the scraps left over after cannabis buds have been plucked and packaged.” I don’t think Shakespeare was baked, no, but I have my doubts about the author of this piece, bless them.
*Theodore Roosevelt
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As we taste, we might recall that today celbrates an indisputable delicacy; it is National Peach Ice Cream Day.
“What’s for breakfast?”*…
… and, we moderns tend to ask, how can we make it faster and easier?… a tendency lampooned, a la Rube Goldberg, in Aardman‘s Classic Wallace and Gromit outing The Wrong Trousers:
Joseph Herscher, proprietor of the wonderful Joseph’s Machines, put the concept to test: he built it…
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers was a favourite of mine growing up, so this machine has been extra special to create! This video not only contains TWO different versions of the final result, but I also take you through my process of figuring out dangerous stunts, solving sticky jam complications and treating dog stage fright. Fun fact: The trousers at the very end were lent to me by Aardman Studios!
Modernizing the most important meal of the day: “Joseph’s Machines recreates Wallace & Gromit’s automated breakfast machine,” via the terrific The Kids Should See This.
* “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.”
– A. A. Milne
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As we ponder progress, we might recall that today is National Quiche Lorraine Day.
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