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EDIBLESTRUCTURES
THE BASIC SCIENCE OF WHAT WE EAT

JOSÉ MIGUEL AGUILERA

TRANSLATED BY MARIAN BLAZES

Boca Raton London New York

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Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This book is an authorized translation of a book published in Spanish by Ediciones Universidad
Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, under the title Ingeniería Gastronómica, 2011 (http://www.edi-
cionesuc.cl).

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 Contents

Introduction xi
About the Author xix

1 Nutritious and Delicious Molecules 1

1.1 We Eat Molecules and We Are Molecules 1
1.2 The Building Blocks 3
1.3 Molecules That Change 9
1.4 There Is an Additive in My Soup! 12
1.5 Sweet Molecules 15
1.6 The Color of Food 17
1.7 Salt for All Tastes 19
1.8 Molecules for Good Health 22
1.9 Genes a la carte 27
1.10 Unwanted Guests 30
1.11 There Is Always Risk 33
1.12 Who Can Protect Us? 38
1.13 Designer Molecules 41
1.14 Bittersweet 44
1.15 Misallocated Molecules 46
Notes 47

2 Food Materials and Structures 53

2.1 Natural Structures 53
2.2 Molecular Sociology 59
2.3 The Science of Chewable Structures 64

v
vi Contents

2.4 Transforming Structures with Heat 70

2.5 Strange Liquids and Solids 73
2.6 Love/Hate Relationships 75
2.7 Capturing Air 77
2.8 To Gel or Not to Gel 79
2.9 Bread: From Molecules to Structures 83
2.10 Changing Structures 85
2.11 Dairy Nanotechnology 87
2.12 The Other Milky Way 91
2.13 Young and Varied Structures 93
2.14 Measuring with Instruments 96
2.15 Measuring with the Senses 99
2.16 That’s the Way I See It 100
Notes 102

3 Journey to the Center of Our Food 107

3.1 Flavorful Structures 107
3.2 We Can’t See the Best Part 110
3.3 Eyes Wide Open 112
3.4 Food under the Scanner 114
3.5 Cooking under the Microscope 116
3.6 Frying in Lilliput 118
3.7 Cooking Pasta 121
3.8 Microscopy in Food Gerontology and Archeology 122
3.9 Chocolate “Bloom” 125
3.10 Reinforced Textures 127
3.11 All in Due Time 129
3.12 Food Structure Design 131
Notes 134

4 From Farm to Cells and Back 139

4.1 From Farm to Fork 139
4.2 Why Malthus Was Wrong 141
4.3 The Routes That Lead to Our Mouths 144
4.4 The World’s Largest Industry 147
4.5 Eating on Earth 149
 Contents vii

4.6 Eating in Space 153

4.7 Less Positive Outlooks 154
4.8 Pig in a Poke? 156
4.9 From Cell to Farm 160
4.10 Food Everywhere 162
4.11 A Bit of Futurology 165
4.12 Sustainable Foods 167
4.13 Wasted Food Structures 171
Notes 173

5 A Pinch of Mathematics 179

5.1 How Mathematics Helps 179
5.2 Engineers and Their Formulas 180
5.3 We Are Not All Equal 184
5.4 Everything Changes over Time 186
5.5 Hard-to-Kill Bacteria 189
5.6 Flavorful Experiences 193
5.7 Kitchen Fractals 196
5.8 Images in the Kitchen 198
Notes 200

6 Nutritional and Culinary Thermodynamics 203

6.1 Thermodynamics and Some of Its Characters 203
6.2 Complying with Laws 206
6.3 Escaping from Equilibrium 208
6.4 An Accounting Exercise 210
6.5 Appetite and Satiety 214
6.6 Calories in the Kitchen and Cooking 218
6.7 Heating with Waves 221
6.8 Barbecue at the Lab 223
Notes 226

7 Between Brain and Cell 229

7.1 Structures That Must Be Broken 229
7.2 Molecules on the Move 232
viii Contents

7.3 Food in the Mouth and in the Nose 237

7.4 Expert and Electronic Noses 240
7.5 A Well-Fed Brain 242
7.6 Back to Molecules: Digestion 245
7.7 Starch Gets to the Blood 250
7.8 We Receive Less than What We Pay 253
7.9 Why Do We Age? 255
7.10 Nutrition: Quo vadis? 257
Notes 260

8 Culinary Technologies and Food Structures 263

8.1 The Conservation Map 263
8.2 Waiting for Dinner to Be Ready 268
8.3 Materials and Utensils in the Kitchen 271
8.4 Bringing Industry into the Kitchen 273
8.5 Measure or Make Measurable 277
8.6 Why Does Popcorn Pop? 280
8.7 Deciphering Frying 281
8.8 In Search of the Perfect Coffee 285
Notes 287

9 The Pleasure of Eating 291

9.1 Enjoying Eating 291
9.2 Gastronomy, Gourmet, Gourmand, Glutton, and So On 293
9.3 Engineering at the Table 296
9.4 Origin of Restaurants 298
9.5 The Expensive Restaurant Boom 299
Notes 300

10 The Empowerment of Chefs 303

10.1 Gastronomy and Art 303
10.2 The Chef Who Invented Air 305
10.3 Chefs: The Top Ten 307
10.4 The New Cuisines 308
10.5 In the Hands of a Chef 309
 Contents ix

10.6 Molecular Gastronomy 311

10.7 From the Test Tube to the Palate 313
10.8 The Reason Scientists Do Not Write Recipes 315
10.9 Gastronomy Goes to College 317
10.10 Some Books on Gastronomy and Science 319
Notes 323

11 The Science That Fascinates Chefs 327

11.1 Chefs and Innovation 327
11.2 The New Ingredients 329
11.3 Three-D Sauces 330
11.4 Edible Films 333
11.5 Spherification 334
11.6 Smoke and Aroma 335
11.7 Structures That Sound 336
11.8 Explosive and Bubbly Matrices 337
11.9 Kitchen Cryogenics 338
11.10 Cold Reductions 340
11.11 Structuring by Freezing 341
11.12 Delicious Cotton Candies 342
11.13 Impregnation under Vacuum 342
11.14 Sous-vide Cooking 343
11.15 Cooking with Glucono-δ-Lactone (GDL) 344
Notes 345

12 Healthy Habits 349

12.1 The Mark of the Past 349
12.2 What Our Genes Say 353
12.3 The Weight of Health 355
12.4 Habits and Diets 359
12.5 Time Is Not on Our Side 364
12.6 “Healthy Diets” 365
12.7 Nutritional Engineering 368
12.8 Information Overload 370
12.9 Educating Consumers 374
12.10 MBA: Master’s Degree in Better Alimentation 375
x Contents

12.11 Designing Foods 378

Notes 380

13 Final Comments 387

13.1 Lessons from a Failed Experiment 387
13.2 Homo gastronomicus and Gastronators 390
13.3 Gastronomic Engineering 392
13.4 A Time for Food (Structure) 393
Notes 395

Appendix 397
 Introduction

Take a moment to imagine this scenario: you are at home relaxing after
a memorable meal in an excellent restaurant. You fall sound asleep and
begin to dream, and in your dream you experience everything that had
to happen in order for you to achieve this blissful state of satisfaction
and well-being.

Molecules, the basic elements of life, first had to orga-

nize in such a way so as to give plants, animals, and
fish their basic structures (just like those in our own
bodies). These structures became the building blocks
of foods. Harmful molecules also had to be removed
from your food, as well as any microorganisms that
might cause illness (though some might have slid
through imperceptibly and you may yet discover their
detrimental effects in the next few hours or later in life).
The vast majority of the molecules entering our mouths
are safe and nutritious (some more than others), thanks
to trial and error during evolution and the dedicated
scientists who work hard to detect unsafe foods and
alert the public to any problems in our food supply.
The food industry (which barely existed 100
years ago) played its part by developing technologies
like refrigeration that allow us to enjoy perishable
fruits and vegetables year round, and by discover-
ing ways to alter natural ingredients to make them
more convenient and adequate to our needs, such as
the low-calorie sweeteners in soda. Perhaps a small

xi
xii Introduction

entrepreneur contributed to your meal by ingeniously

developing a new seasoning mix. Exotic ingredients
from around the world brought interesting flavors to
the meal as well, and getting them to the table required
the processing and packaging that protect perishable
goods during long-term transport.
The restaurant chef combined familiar and new fla-
vors in creative ways. In the kitchen, molecules and
structures underwent spectacular changes, each in
their own rhythm, regulated by well-known chemi-
cal and physical principles. These cooked “structures”
were broken down in your mouth to release delicious
aromas and flavors that you enjoyed (and may have
even caused you to recall past experiences), and the
brain played its role.
You discussed all of this with your dinner compan-
ions, because this meal was a social occasion. You and
your friends are health conscious, and though you rec-
ognized that the meal may not have been nutritionally
perfect, you enjoyed it immensely anyway, which is
also important. You discussed how you still take plea-
sure in preparing traditional meals at home with your
families, even though the busy rhythms of modern-
day life are intruding upon this ritual.
At a certain point during the meal, your body sig-
naled that you were full and you stopped eating. And
although you could have polished off your dessert, you
left half on the plate with some difficulty, proud of
your willpower. The bill for the meal was steep, but you
understand that, like it or not, in order to have access
to food in this world we must pay for it. Meanwhile,
hundreds of millions of people on this planet, espe-
cially children, suffer from hunger and the illnesses
associated with living on less than a dollar a day. Many
others overeat almost unconsciously and suffer from
obesity and its associated complications, a paradox of
the twenty-first century that must be addressed.
 Introduction xiii

But now, as you sleep, your body is busily breaking

down flavorful food structures and sending molecules
to your cells, where genes create the machinery that
repairs your tissues and brings just the right amount
of energy to them (or maybe too much, which would
cause you to gain weight). At this point there’s not
much for you to do. And tomorrow? Tomorrow you
will have to burn those excess calories and eat less
than usual to make up the difference. Some fortunate
people have occupations requiring physical activity,
but those of us with sedentary jobs must opt to walk
to work, climb the stairs, or go for a jog. The rules of
thermodynamics imply we must also cut back on sed-
entary activities like watching television, surfing the
Internet, and playing video games, because any calo-
ries we don’t burn as fuel will accumulate as fat. Before
you wake from your dream, you remember that each
day brings new and better information on what we eat
and how food affects our health and well-being. You
promise yourself that you will pay more attention.

Certainly the world of food and eating food is fascinating. Humanity

now has access to the best variety, quality, and quantity of food per per-
son than ever before in history, though this food is very poorly distrib-
uted throughout the world. Some eat too much while many are at the
brink of starvation. For the first time, basic scientific relationships are
being established between what we eat and how we feel (and between
nutrition and the risk of certain diseases). Today there are hundreds
of research labs where scientists generate better understanding of raw
materials and food products. Bookstores have many books on cooking
and nutrition, while newspapers and TV offer articles and programs
dedicated to nutrition, health, and gastronomy. Despite all of this infor-
mation, we still don’t know how to feed ourselves. Obesity has become
the most prevalent disease in the world, so much so that the problem
has been coined globesity, and has surpassed tobacco use for its nega-
tive effects on public health. Unfortunately this phenomenon typically
affects the poorest and least educated people in society. Food should be
xiv Introduction

our friend, but because we don’t know our friend well enough, we have
transformed it into an enemy. We need a much better understanding of
what we eat, including the important role food has played in the devel-
opment of humanity, the science behind nutrition, and the ways food
can be manipulated to bring us better nutrition, health, well-being,
and pleasure. This knowledge is essential if we are to guide our eating
habits in an informed way.
The central objectives of this book are to address the pressing food
trends of this century, among them: (a) the growing evidence that flavor-
ful food structures are as important as the nutritious and healthful food
molecules of which they are made; (b) a need to understand and control
how these food structures are created and presented as products that
respond to nutritional requirements; (c) the empowerment of consumers
and the appearance of the axis that connects the brain, digestive system,
and the cells in our body after foods enter our mouth; (d) the separation
between a knowledgeable gourmet “elite” and the rest of the population
who simply want to eat quick meals as cheaply as possible; and (e) a
reasonable and widespread concern with health and well-being, and in
advanced societies, with the environment as well. For this reason I have
made an effort to contextualize much of the information on the subject
into one single book, drawing from diverse disciplines such as physical
and engineering sciences, food technology, nutrition, and gastronomy.
This book is far from a specialized reference for any of these subjects.
Instead, it attempts to explain certain concepts of physics, chemistry,
engineering, and the science of food in an entertaining but sufficiently
rigorous way. I have chosen to use certain scientific terms in order to
facilitate the communication between those who create the knowledge
in these fields and the educated public, especially those who are curious,
love to cook, and want to enjoy good food. The language and concepts
presented in this book should give the reader some access to specialized
texts and scientific journals, and above all, to the best and most current
information available on the Internet and other media.
This book is formatted into short sections on specific themes (thematic
“appetizers”), some of which can be read as opinion columns. Some
sections can be read independently from the rest, and there are many
cross-references within the book to facilitate comprehension. You will
be surprised at how much knowledge already exists about the foods
 Introduction xv

we eat each day and yet how much there is left to discover and under-
stand. What makes this book novel is that it examines the importance
of food structures—the supramolecular assemblies and matrices that
are created by nature and when we cook—rather than the basic chemi-
cal compounds that are the more traditional focus of study. After all,
we buy, cook, eat, and digest food structures, and we use spoons,
tongs, pots, and pans to explore and develop these food structures, not
pipettes and test tubes.
In recent decades the idea has emerged that the structures or matrices
that contain food molecules are what is most responsible for the accept-
ability (taste and texture) of our food, as well as for a large part of its
nutritional and healthful benefits. The ability of certain molecules to
protect us from certain illnesses depends on how the molecules are
structured in the food, for example. These helpful molecules must be
successfully liberated, absorbed, digested, and sent to the cells. Food
technology must expand to include other scientific disciplines, and as
it does, certain myths will begin to fall by the wayside.
The cooks in cafeterias and casinos as well as chefs in restaurants
together with food scientists and technologists in industry are respon-
sible for most of what that we eat today. In order to continue to develop
palatable foods in the future, their kitchens and laboratories must
become places for experimentation, where they can create food struc-
tures that, above all, taste good. This is a main characteristic, sine qua
non, of food that nourishes the soul. But the molecules we eat should
also be safe, they must help protect us against preventable chronic dis-
eases, help us to maintain a stable weight, and contribute to our vitality
and well-being. And all of this must be accomplished on a finite planet
with scarce resources, so the creation and consumption of these food
structures must be sustainable for future generations.
The schematic in Figure I.1 illustrates the scope of this book. Nature
converts molecules into edible food structures, most of which are then
transformed into products in factories and the kitchens. Tasty food
structures enter our mouths and different sensations invade our body.
When these structures finally reach our cells, they have been broken
back down into molecules helping our body to function. All of this is
happening on our limited and fragile planet Earth.
xvi Introduction

Molecules Foods Molecules

Brain

Mouth Cells

Tasty, healthy, and sustainable edible food structures

Figure I.1 The organization and contents of the book.

I teach food engineering and have researched the processes and micro-
structures of raw materials and food products for nearly 35 years. Over
my years as a professor I have explained the basic principles of science
and engineering by often using cooking processes as examples, as they
are such familiar subjects to the students. In the last five years I have
also invited young chefs into my laboratory, to the surprise of my engi-
neering colleagues, and have enjoyed the joint culinary experimenta-
tion that results.
Everyone has to develop a certain individual relationship with food and
how to eat properly, so there are no universally applicable guidelines
about how to think about food, regardless of what some diet gurus
tell. Today it is not easy to establish a healthy relationship with food,
especially for the millions of people who live in urban settings, and
who must balance the time spent in preparing and consuming their
meals with the demands of transportation, work, and multiple distrac-
tions. The 1967 Nobel laureate in Literature, Miguel Ángel Asturias
(1899–1974), summed it up very well:1

From the kitchens fled the loving hours of prepara-

tion that went into meals and pastries, and the sadness
disguised as concern for weight, figure, sin, cost, and
 Introduction xvii

timeliness ended what had once been pleasant and

enjoyable: eating food. (Comiendo en Hungría [Eating in
Hungary], Ediciones Universidad Católica, Chile, 2009)

I am grateful to have witnessed the “other side” of food engineering—

what happens on the “micro” level—and to be able to propose some
interpretations that may be controversial, but are at least original and
provocative.2 Why else dedicate oneself to academia? My gratitude goes
to my students who have accepted my challenges and responded with
elegant, rigorous, and intelligent propositions, many of which are in
this book. I am also grateful to various people who have contributed
their suggestions to different parts of the text and to Marian Blazes who
has done a superb translation of the revised Spanish text (Ingeniería
Gastronómica, Ediciones UC, Santiago, Chile). Finally I thank my wife
Astrid, and my children Carolina, Sebastián, and Magdalena, who
endured a few long explanations at lunch and dinner on the foods we
were eating, without ever requiring empirical proof for my arguments.

Notes

1. The ceremonies honoring the recipients of the Nobel Prize include

a grand banquet whose history and menus are described in the book
Soderlind, U. 2005. The Nobel Banquets. World Scientific, New Jersey.
2. See also Aguilera, J.M. 2012. The engineering inside our dishes.
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 1, 31–36.