Essay on health, nutrition and gastronomy

Abstract

Scientific, technological and medical research, or new models of social and political organization have been at the center of fiction themes, with food appearing as a tangential theme but always present. Most of the transcendental experiences of life activate the circuit of pleasure. In Western societies food choice is not a matter of survival to become something related to sensorial pleasure and, sometimes, intellectual pleasure. Currently there is a nebula of food, functional foods, to which components are added, removed, replaced, concentrated or the bioavailability of some components is increased. Along those, the so-called "superfoods" have emerged. How to supply food to a growing population with a dwindling soil availability? The source of food protein is another issue for the future; any of them is directly or indirectly related to land exploitation. The interaction between science, technology and cuisine makes new preservation techniques, beyond obtaining safe products, to get insight into the way in which these technologies modify the texture of food and that can be thought of in new solutions for consumers that combine organoleptic and nutritional quality with innovation.