food science

When you hear food engineering, think of things like how Pringles chips give a huge burst of flavour then shatter in your mouth with a nice crunch, but leave nothing to chew.

Or how fast food burgers like Mcdonalds and Wendy's similarly give lots of flavour but nothing to chew.

Both are examples of engineered foods. In both cases, designed to leave you wanting more.

They work on two principles.

1. The brain wants flavour and crunch.
2. It cheats on immediate fulness by counting bites/chews.

You can counteract their food design with smaller bites and chewing more.

This was from a CBC Radio special on the science of fast food I recall from far too long ago.

A friend of mine got a food engineering internship after completing his degree in chemistry. He was tasked with incrementally adding a new preservative to a measured bowl of cereal, and tasting it at each interval, to mark down the amount that could be added without detecting a change in taste. He had to do this for every cereal in their line.

That's a toy, right?