GhostFood

October 29, 2013 7:45 PM

"From a street-parked GhostFood truck, Simun and Songster and their team of trained staff will be serving a menu of three items, each of which conjures up a future dining experience for a food whose supply is currently threatened by climate change. " // "Its menu offers a curious collection of substitutes for potentially endangered foods: artificial recreations of chocolate, cod, and peanut butter." // "Pop one of the placebos--or “edible textural substitutes”--in your mouth and enjoy."
posted by the man of twists and turns (8 comments total)

Go away, I don't want your ghost chups.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 9:14 PM on October 29, 2013 [5 favorites]

Come massive changes in climate with global warming, I strongly suspect we won't have the cash or resources for nose bud thingys. And we'll probably end up eating each other first.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 10:02 PM on October 29, 2013

The Verge article focuses on artificial recreations of smells that change how we perceive food, and that's an interesting aspect of American cuisine I am surprised conspiracy theorists haven't run away with yet. So much of our processed food gets an extra enhancement with unlabeled chemical profiles and additives that aren't even required to be labeled, simply lumped under "natural and artificial flavors."

I'm not saying there's anything there, but it's just something you never think about until you visit a perfume profile research factory in New Jersey and realize most of what they do has nothing to do with department stores. How do you make a beef patty from burger king taste like smoke when it's never been in the same zipcode as a charcoal grill?

Magic.
posted by hobo gitano de queretaro at 10:19 PM on October 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Pleased to see the Verge article mention bananas. I heard the other day that artificial banana flavoring is based off the taste of the Gros Michel banana, formerly the main cultivar but nearly totally wiped out by a fungus. That, supposedly, is why banana-flavored sweets don't taste like bananas - that they used to, but the dominant banana variety is different now and so is its flavor. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it's interesting to think about.
posted by Gordafarin at 6:20 AM on October 30, 2013 [4 favorites]

A flip side to this is, over the years I have known a number of people whose idea of how certain things taste is based completely on their artificial analog. Example: this summer I offered a young woman some excellent cherries we'd picked that day; she ate one and exclaimed that it tasted just like a Luden's cough drop. Another time I was sharing grape pie with friends and one of their teenaged kids said it tasted like a Tootsie Roll Pop, and confessed he'd never eaten "plain" grapes before.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:59 AM on October 30, 2013

Another time I was sharing grape pie with friends and one of their teenaged kids said it tasted like a Tootsie Roll Pop, and confessed he'd never eaten "plain" grapes before.


This is me. I didn't have Concord grapes until my 20s, and they tasted completely 'artificial'. I'd grown up eating only seedless grocery store grapes, which taste completely different (I think the term is "foxy").
posted by leotrotsky at 8:06 AM on October 30, 2013

kinnakeet: "A flip side to this is, over the years I have known a number of people whose idea of how certain things taste is based completely on their artificial analog. Example: this summer I offered a young woman some excellent cherries we'd picked that day; she ate one and exclaimed that it tasted just like a Luden's cough drop. Another time I was sharing grape pie with friends and one of their teenaged kids said it tasted like a Tootsie Roll Pop, and confessed he'd never eaten "plain" grapes before."

It's funny you mention that. It's like the story of why A-1 tastes like it does. Originally, it was created to be a ketchup alternate, and was sold in cans. When the manufacturers decided to move to glass containers, public outcry forced them to change the flavor to replicate the metallic tang lost by the glass containers. Also, try making someone REAL pineapple/pineapple & grapefruit/grapefruit juice and see how they will tell you it doesn't taste right, due to the lack of metal flavor.
posted by Samizdata at 10:33 AM on October 30, 2013

Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies
posted by homunculus at 11:27 AM on November 3, 2013