Is Molecular Gastronomy Healthy?

 

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Molecular gastronomy has been around for decades and is in fact a science, which studies the physical and chemical transformations which occur to various ingredients during cooking. It is a modern style of cooking, and takes advantage of many technical innovations from the scientific disciplines. Molecular cuisine is were science meets food and art, mainly because the presentation of the food is most of the times spectacular.

Brief History of Molecular Gastronomy

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People started experimenting with physical and chemical properties of food hundreds of years ago, but it wasn’t until the “fathers” of Molecular Gastronomy, the Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and French physical chemist Hervé This made it the center of their studies. In 1988 they gave it a name and a definition. Molecular cuisine is also called Progressive Cuisine or Modernist Cuisine.

I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.-Nicholas Kurti

Advantages and Disadvantages 

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Let’s start with the disadvantages:

• This type of cuisine experiments with the chemical and physical composition of the ingredients by introducing chemicals, or combining compatible molecular compositions of ingredients. This sounds a bit scary, knowing that your dish was deconstructed and reconstructed from the same ingredients with the help of certain chemicals.

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Now what are the advantages:

• Food doesn’t lose its flavor and original ingredients, which means you get the same taste but in different shape and consistency
• The food is never fried, which is definitely a great advantage for obvious reasons
• You get to try something absolutely new made from the same beloved ingredients, plus the Wow factor 

source: Molecular Recipes

"Is It Safe? Is It Healthy?"
Now we get to the main questions. It may be using avant-garde cooking techniques and equipment to transform flavors and presentations, but how safe is it and is it healthy?

Molecular gastronomy has several subdivisions for culinary application including foams, freezing, dehydrating, sous­‐vide, spherification, enzymatic action, sugar substitutes, emulsifiers and hydrocolloids among lots of others.

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  Molecular cuisine relies a lot on emulsifiers and hydro-colloids. An emulsifier is a molecule in which one end likes to be in an oily environment and the other in a water environment. Hydro-colloids are used as thickeners and gelling agents. And this is when can become tricky.

If the chefs use naturally occurring emulsifiers and hydro-colloids then it is safe to say that the food is healthy. If it is organic or naturally occurring such as gelatin or agar agar then there is nothing to worry about.

Bottomline

source: Molecular Gastronomy Adventure

Since Molecular food science involves liquid nitrogen fumes, dry ice, xanthan gums, calcium salts, the concern about its health repercussions is but natural. But most experts have allayed the possibility of any harm as the amount of chemicals used is miniscule. And this makes us sigh with relief, because a regular person doesn’t eat at progressive cuisine restaurants every day. It is an occasional treat and the exposure to potentially harmful ingredients is minimal. Thus, bon appetite!