These Artists Serve Up Environmental Crises Through Food

IRA FLATOW: This is science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, the good and the bad of using generative AI in scientific papers. Plus, former NIH director, Francis Collins, looks back on his career and forward to restoring public trust in science. But first, may I interest you in a pollution cookie? Maybe a loaf of wildfire sourdough? Or if you’re craving something savory, how about a side of mock extinct passenger pigeon?

Yeah, well, that’s what’s cooking at the Center for Genomic Astronomy in Amsterdam, where artists use innovative ingredients to represent environmental crises, and imagine what the future of food could look like. Here to tickle our taste buds is Zack Denfeld, co-founder of the Center for Genomic Astronomy in Amsterdam. Zack, welcome to science Friday.

ZACK DENFELD: Hi, Ira. Good to be here.

IRA FLATOW: First of all, can you define for us what– what is genomic astronomy?

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah, I mean, a slightly technical definition is, we study the organisms and environments that are manipulated by human food cultures. But maybe a more plainspoken way is we’re interested in how we grow and eat food, and how that relates to the life sciences.

IRA FLATOW: And the goal of the center is what?

ZACK DENFELD: We want to have people think more deeply about what they, themselves, choose to eat. And then at a larger scale, what our agroecosystems look like. What kind of plants or animals we’re raising. And how those relate to environmental crises, both locally and globally.

IRA FLATOW: And how do you decide what kind of gastronomical delight you’re going to create?

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah, usually, when we start a project, we think about an unusual ingredient, or a landscape in transition. And start to visit farms or chefs and think about what is facing them, what their challenges are. And then we’re often reading scientific papers or collaborating with scientific labs to sort of understand how these worlds that don’t always talk to each other could. So we’re the bridge kind of between a chef or a farmer, and then a scientist.

IRA FLATOW: All right, let’s get into this because I want to know more about these air pollution cookies. How would you make such a thing? And why?

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah, so smog tasting is a project we started back in 2011, actually in Bangalore, India. And we were working with students thinking about do-it-yourself air pollution sensing. And we kind of realized that a few more numbers on a screen weren’t going to change anyone’s behavior. So we started paying close attention to the smell of smog and realized that there’s different types of smog based on the chemicals that are in the pollution.

So there’s even a lab at the University of California, which we visited, that’s a smog synthesis lab. And so our first instinct was to go out and try to capture this taste, which we did by whipping egg whites, or making egg meringues in the middle of very polluted cities and picking up some of that truly disgusting air quality. And as we did this in different cities around the world, we really realized that there were different recipes for understanding smog. There were different constituent chemicals, and those gave really different smells and tastes.

And when people tasted them, they were choosing to taste. It wasn’t breathing. Some people don’t want to taste the smog meringue. But other people want to taste it and understand how their local taste of place in the air compares to, let’s say, Beijing or Houston, Texas, or Bangalore.

IRA FLATOW: Do you have a city that has the tastiest smog or the worst smog?

ZACK DENFELD: I have a surprising one, which is we were in Bergen, Norway, which is a truly beautiful city, and, you would think, has amazing air quality. But because of the seven mountains, pollution gets trapped. And then large boats come in the summer and a lot of bunker fuel is used. So you go from kind of quite beautiful, clean air to kind of some of the most dramatic bad air in Europe because of the geography. And that was pretty surprising.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, that would be surprising. And what do people say after they’ve bitten into one of your smoggy cookies?

ZACK DENFELD: Well, they start to ask really interesting questions. They say, will I be poisoned? Will I be sick? And we say, well, you’re breathing it every day. And your digestive system and your respiratory system process these chemicals quite differently. And they start to say, well, why does it taste like that? Or why am I scared of it? So then we kind of open up a conversation that gets beyond just sort of quantitative measures of how bad things are, to precise things about which chemicals and from where.

Is it from coal-fired power plants? Is it from automobiles? Is it from mercury processing? So kind of some of that specificity comes out. But they also then think back to like as they’re walking through a city or their town, what the smell is. They become more cognitive of their day-to-day kind of smell experience.

IRA FLATOW: Now, we’ve been talking about cookies here. Do you have a favorite other food that the center created?

ZACK DENFELD: I think the cobalt-60 sauce is pretty interesting. We made–

IRA FLATOW: So wait. The cobalt-60 sauce? You got to tell me about that.

ZACK DENFELD: We got pretty interested in the history of radiation breeding. So kind of before our contemporary techniques of CRISPR or transgenesis, the US, but lots of other countries, thought about could we expose seeds or plants to radiation and mutate them to get new agricultural varieties? So that research still continues, even though it’s wound down. And we wanted to go out and find some of the successes from that research and make a sauce out of it.

So we made cobalt-60 sauce, which was plants and seeds that were exposed to cobalt-60 in order to mutate them, and then we’re grown out. So a lot of watermelon varieties, and barley, and a lot of the peppermint. So having that kind of palette of ingredients kind of directed what the sauce could be. So we have this kind of quite fruity, minty barbecue sauce that we’ve served on many occasions.

IRA FLATOW: And the people who eat this are not fearful that they’re eating radiation? They’ve confused the two things.

ZACK DENFELD: Right. And that’s an important conversation we can begin is, one, just kind of laying out the facts. But also talk about how this history of science, of radiation breeding compares to like GMOs. What the fears are and what may be the possibilities are. And where that could open up people’s imagination. Because we kind of already have done some odd research, even almost 100 years ago now.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. And that’s the thing. You’ve got a conversation going, right? That’s what you’d like?

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah, for sure. And I think the art here can open up some other ways of approaching this that aren’t so rational. So they’re not irrational, but they might be arational. And what I mean by that is by using taste, and flavor, and preference, it brings things in like experience and joy. But also memories of home, and things that aren’t quite normative in scientific research. And it doesn’t reduce all food experiences to calories or optimizing efficiency.

IRA FLATOW: Right. That is really fascinating. I know you’ve got a new project in the works, one involving AI, of course, and an ancient farming practice. Tell us about that.

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah, so we’ve been kind of researching food, forests and agroforestry here in Europe, and to a certain extent, in North America and Asia, for the last three years. And so food forests is kind of this movement to either relearn about or to reinvent really biodiverse ways of doing agriculture. So it’s using a lot of perennial plants rather than field crops. And the idea is that it’s very biodiverse, and you’re building towards these really resilient trees over 10, 20 or 30 years.

So this kind of food forest farming does a lot of ecological good, but it has some constraints. Which is it’s extremely complex, and you might have 100 species that you’re picking in a week. Our farmer, last week, dropped off 24 different varieties here at the end of the season. And it doesn’t have a lot of protein. So what we’ve done is we’ve kind of combined these really biodiverse food forest ingredients with some of the alternative proteins that are coming out of food design labs and research labs.

And so that might be everything from legumes to artificial shrimp and artificial chicken, to even lab grown meat. And so we’ve been using AI to combine these really two different visions of the future of food, which are not usually put next to each other, but could actually be complementary in terms of what they offer to the kitchen.

IRA FLATOW: And people are experimenting with new sources of protein, because we’re running out of protein. Is AI good at finding those substitutes?

ZACK DENFELD: I think it’s– I wouldn’t put this on AI, but I think the focus here on recipes and culture is what’s good. Because a lot of the obsession around protein is like, how do you reduce some of the animal consumption? And then, how do you get people to eat more plants and vegetables? And then the solution is often this like goop, gray goo, fake chicken. But actually getting really good at making beautiful, healthy, plant-based foods that are desirable happens in the kitchen, or in the family, or in the cafeteria of a hospital, let’s say.

And so for that, you do need a lot of culinary knowledge. And I think AI doesn’t hurt.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Yeah. And so what can you do through art that scientists may not be able to do?

ZACK DENFELD: We collaborate with lots of scientists. And I think they’re excited to work with us, because it gives them a chance to change both their perspective and the way they can talk about what they do. So it’s not always the case that you can bring in things like beauty or joy, or even conviviality, into a scientific paper. Or even trying to reinvent a food system. And so I think being able to talk about a new, let’s say, intercropping method that’s being tested in the field. And actually transform that not only into a recipe that uses these diverse plants, but then create a moment where people can experience that not as something abstract, but as something real that they’re putting into their body and they’re spending time tasting, is just a really different pace and approach to food.

And I think most scientists who work on food or the environment care deeply and love those moments in life. But they don’t always get to shine in the research. And so, foregrounding that makes that part of the inquiry about the world, our experience in the world as essential as measuring the world, or optimizing the world. Really enjoying the world that we’re creating.

IRA FLATOW: Last question for you. How can folks at home practice this kind of art in their own kitchens? Any advice for them?

ZACK DENFELD: Yeah. I think just taking a bit more time, if you have it on a weekend, and you’re not rushing to just try to get some delicious, nutritious food to your family in your very busy schedule. And just gather a bunch of unusual stuff. Maybe you go to the farmer’s market. Maybe you go to the supermarket and you buy something you’ve always been curious about, but kind of never taken a chance on. And then sit with it for a minute. Maybe read about it online or read a Wikipedia post about its history.

And when you focus on even any one ingredient, an entire world opens up. So if you get an apple, pay attention to what variety it is. And there’s a whole history of how that apple got to you today in terms of breeding, and transport, and recipes around it. And let that kind of be a moment of being steeped in those cultural as well as potentially scientific histories. And then see what you can do with that– with other ingredients in your kitchen.

IRA FLATOW: Fascinating, Zack. Good luck to you and your food folks.

ZACK DENFELD: Thank you very much. Great to talk to you.

IRA FLATOW: You too. Zack Denfeld is a co-founder of the Center for Genomic Astronomy in Amsterdam. And if you want to read more about this fantasy foodie future, head to our website, sciencefriday.com/foodfuture.

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