Science in Food Production: Done Right and Wrong

Cows grazing in the shadow of the Alps of the Jungfrau region of Switzerland

I've had this photo sitting on my desk at work since my wife and I visited Switzerland in 2010. In part, it was to keep my spirits up while sitting in a beige cubicle in decidedly non-mountainous South Carolina (the Blue Ridge just makes it into the corner of the state, and they are pretty, but those ain't mountains.) It also just resonates with my Alpine German/Swiss heritage and sense of pastoral aesthetic.

Today I read an article from NPR (thanks to my wife for sending it over) that is both interesting from a scientific standpoint, and a little disheartening from a social one. For a cheese-lover, its got some positives and negatives. On the one hand, it seems that alpine cow herders are a dying breed as young people move from the mountains to cities for more gainful employment. On the other, it seems that science is finally starting to explain what the rest of us who care already know: dairy products from pastured cows tastes better than those from feedlot or grain-fed cows, and that goes double if the pasture is on the side of the mountain.

While its never easy to watch traditional lifestyles fade and be overtaken and homogenized with modern ones, the alpine farmer has only been able to survive in recent decades thanks to significant government subsidies. So long as there is a market for fine cheeses, however, the alpine farmer will continue to drive his cattle into the high meadows each spring. It just means that those who can't live without will be paying more for it. I'd like to see more programs along the lines of WWOOF to help bring youths who need a break from fast-paced city lives up into the mountains to get a different perspective and help to continue the tradition.

What is interesting to me, as an engineer and foodie, is how science is being used to make food taste better naturally. Food science has always been about making food "better," its just that better has typically meant more consistent or addicting. Raising the same breed of cow, feeding them the same type of feed, and pumping them with the same hormones leads to the same properties and quantities of milk, and thus a dairy product that is the same day after day. Don't bother that this process has typically meant a reduction in the flavor complexity of foods like cheese; for a long time customers just wanted to know what they were getting, even if it hardly qualifies as cheese. When the industry does wield food science to enhance flavor, the result is typically strongly one-note, and done with chemicals rather than natural processes. 

But I know people are coming around to eating better quality food. Understanding not just the chemistries of the world's fine foods, but also how they develop in foods naturally, gives conscientious farmers "knobs" they can turn or levers they can pull in order to vary properties of their foods without hormones or chemical additives. I read another good example of this in Wired a couple months ago. A pair of scientist wine enthusiasts have developed sensors to measure water flow in grape vines. This is helping vineyard operators make watering decisions which have direct impacts on the flavor of the grapes and, coincidentally, the environment. These mergers of art and science are an admission that our reductionist version of food science has failed at making high quality products, but that science can illuminate some of the causal relationships in raising plants and animals and help craftspeople make better informed decisions. Less reliance on "this is how I've always done it" attitudes can help free farmers to experiment and be able to trust the results; and it also ensures that quality foods don't die off as the traditions that produced them eventually will.