Peterson compares his rigorous approach to targeted drug discovery, but rejects the suggestion that tinkering with flavors is somehow unnatural.

"We live in a technological world," he says. "Why would you think we shouldn't investigate food?" Reducing bitterness could be as simple as processing the dough under a different level of acidity using all-natural ingredients, he notes, adding that chemistry is part of everyday life.  "Many molecules have never been identified," he says, "but we've been consuming them for 20,000 years."

3 Comments

1. 1. Oblate Spheroid 12:53 PM 4/2/09

   The unproved hypothesis: Bread, any bread, is a healthy food. Six million years of human evolution did not involve the consumption of grains in any large percentage of total dietary calories. Only the last ten thousand years have seen the human cultivation, cooking and consumption of grains. Grains are toxic if not cooked. Mainstream science needs to be more careful.

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2. 2. skass 07:01 PM 4/19/09

   You quote Devin Peterson as saying "We bake things but happens to them?" This looks like a typo on your part. Can you double-check your notes and let us know what he said?

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3. 3. Amandine in reply to Oblate Spheroid 07:32 AM 6/29/09

   But that doesn't mean that evolution does not occur in 10,000 years. For example, southeast Asians have an unusually larger quantity of enzymes in their saliva to digest carbohydrates such as amylase. Which is probably why I and most of my family/friends have an insatiable appetite for rice.
   
   There's also this hypothesis that precursors to modern humans had an appendix to digest grass.

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