Take it away, Chef Silver. [Applause] [Music]

Thank you all for coming. In today’s talk, I’m going to define and give examples of proteins, talk about MSG and umami, and explain how and why our bodies crave protein. Before we start, I’d like to take a poll. How many of you avoid foods with MSG? How many cook with MSG? Who knows what MSG actually is? As educators, we’re constantly thinking about how we can be more impactful in teaching and in shaping how our students continue to learn and approach problems after they’ve left the classroom. Whether we’re in a lecture hall or a kitchen or a lab, we have a unique opportunity — and I believe a responsibility — to encourage the question of why. The why is what food science is all about. It’s the difference between the ability to execute a recipe and the ability to develop a recipe or to figure out what went wrong or to make something better. Embracing scientific literacy can enrich your teaching, inspire your students, and elevate your impact as educators. It will fundamentally change how your students approach cooking, baking, recipe development, and problem solving. So today, we’re going to explore the secret world of proteins in the hope that it will inspire you and spark ideas for new ways for you to inspire your students. When you hear the word “protein,” what do you think of? For a lot of people, the answer is this. A ribeye is about 17% protein. And of that, 90% is made from just 10 different types of protein. The human body is made from over a 100,000 different types of protein. DNA, our genetic code, is basically just a set of recipes for making proteins. And these proteins run almost everything in biology. There are two main categories of proteins: structural and functional. Structural proteins make up our muscles, skin, hair, cartilage, tendons, and bones. Collagen is our body’s main structural protein, and it accounts for one-third of all the proteins in our bodies. Most proteins in biology, however, are functional, and they fold into different shapes so that they can carry out specific tasks in the cell. Myoglobin, for example, stores and releases oxygen in muscle cells. Many functional proteins in biology become structural proteins in foods. Glutenin, for example, is a nutrient storage protein in wheat, but it serves as a structural protein when we knead dough and make bread. Functional proteins are very diverse. Antibodies help protect us from disease. Metalloproteins store metal nutrients. Membrane proteins shuttle molecules in and out of our cells. Signaling proteins are messengers like the hormones insulin, glucagon, and oxytocin. Circulatory proteins move nutrients and waste products through our bodies. And of all the different proteins our bodies make, the largest group of them is enzymes. Enzymes are responsible for virtually every part of our metabolism. Enzymes are cellular machines. They speed up chemical reactions and they also build, maintain, and repair our bodies. Motor proteins are enzymes that can drastically change shape. These tiny machines build and tear down roadways (which are themselves made from protein), manufacture new molecules, contract muscles, and carry cargo. Kinesin is one of these enzymes. Relative to its size, kinesin moves as fast as a car on a freeway. And like an electric car, kinesin uses rechargeable batteries called ATP. These ATP batteries are recharged by another enzyme, ATP Synthase. Although it’s shown in slow motion here, in real life, this motor protein can rotate over 21,000 times a minute. If a car’s wheels were rotating at that speed, the car would be traveling about 1,600 miles an hour. Many enzymes work together to convert food into energy. This process is extremely complicated involving a large number of different enzymes. So let’s start with Hexokinase. Hexokinase is an ATP hexose, 6-phosphotransferase that phosphorilates hexose monossaccharides using ATP as a phosphate donor. That makes sense so far, right? Okay. Well, don’t worry. I have a short clip here that will help to simplify this. Andy: “Did you know that the food you eat becomes energy? Yeah. Boom. That’s spaghetti. Nachos. A cookie.” April, “That’s my husband.” All right. Now, I need a volunteer.

Okay. I want you to hold your breath. And don’t try to cheat by holding your neighbor’s breath. I’ll tell you when to exhale. When your cells convert food into energy, their waste product is CO2, carbon dioxide, a gas that you exhale with every breath. Carbon dioxide reacts with water molecules to produce carbonic acid, which is why pollution makes our oceans more acidic, which is harming our marine life. Your body produces vast amounts of CO2. About 100 million trillion molecules every second while you’re resting and about a thousand times more when you’re active. That’s more than the number of grains of sand on the entire planet, plus another 12,000 planets every second. But CO2 doesn’t dissolve very well in your blood. Without help, it would build up in your cells so quickly that you would die within minutes. This is where an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase comes to the rescue. It speeds up the reaction between carbon dioxide and water — about 15 million times faster than it would happen naturally. This quickly transforms the carbon dioxide into bicarbonate, the same molecule that’s in baking soda, which can travel safely through your blood. Carbonic anhydrase then converts the bicarbonate back to carbon dioxide in your lungs so that you can breathe it out. Okay, go ahead and exhale. Did you make it this long? That sense of panic that you felt is not from a lack of oxygen. It’s because if your blood’s pH doesn’t stay within a very narrow range, you will pass out… and then you will die. So, your body is very sensitive to how acidic your blood is. And when you hold your breath and your blood pH starts to drop, alarms go off in your head telling you to breathe. You know that little sting you get on your tongue when you drink soda? That’s because the carbonic anhydrase in your saliva is converting the carbon dioxide in the soda to carbonic acid on your tongue and it’s stimulating your tongue’s pain receptors. Enzymes do what they do because of their shape. If the shape of a protein changes even a little, it will no longer be able to function as intended. You can change the shape of a protein with heat, acids, by whisking, or in many other ways. When proteins lose their natural shape, we call it denaturing. And that’s why heating foods kills pathogens because the proteins that run their metabolism denature and stop working. The same is true of enzymes and food. If you denature them, they stop working.

Did you ever wonder why rubbing lemon juice on an apple stops it from browning? The browning reaction is an oxidation reaction that is sped up by an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase. If you denature that enzyme or you put it into an environment where it can’t function, you can slow or stop this process.

When you cut broccoli, you release an enzyme (myrosinase) that converts some of the compounds into an anti-carcinogen called sulforaphane. If you cut your broccoli into small pieces and let it sit for about 15 minutes, this enzyme will create a lot of these beneficial molecules. Cooking the broccoli destroys the enzyme and stops this process, but it doesn’t destroy the sulforaphane, so it still maintains its nutritional benefits even after cooking. But what if you just cooked a whole bunch of broccoli before you came to this talk? What you can do is cut some fresh broccoli and mix it in with the cooked broccoli. The enzymes in the fresh broccoli will still convert the molecules in the cooked broccoli into this cancer fighting compound.

When you cut garlic, you release enzymes that make allicin the molecule responsible for that sharp flavor of garlic. But if you cook the garlic before cutting it, these enzymes are denatured. So cutting cooked garlic will not create this flavor.

And last, I’m sure you’re all aware of how dangerous botulism is. The botulinum toxin is the most potent toxin in the world. How potent, you ask? What if I told you that just one grain of salts worth of this toxin could kill you? That would be crazy, right? But the truth is even more scary. One grain of salts worth of this neurotoxin is enough to kill a thousand people. Botulinum toxin is an enzyme, so it can be denatured and made safe by cooking, but it must be cooked for long enough to denature all of the toxin. Is it worth the risk? My motto is: when in doubt, (audience: “throw it out.”).

All right, I’ve given you all kinds of examples of proteins, but what is a protein? To answer that, we need to start with amino acids. Amino acids are molecules that have five parts. A head, two arms, a body, and then the legs and tail. There are 20 different amino acids in nature. And in all of them, the heads are all the same, the bodies are all the same, the right arms are all the same, the left arms are all the same. Only the legs and tail are different. The right arm of one amino acid grabs a hold of the left arm of the next amino acid, and that’s how they join together.

Proteins are very long, linear chains of amino acids. Typical proteins are a few hundred amino acids long, but some are over 30,000 amino acids long. Many people describe proteins as beads on a string, but I prefer to think of them as candies on a string. Why candies, you ask? Because what most people don’t know is that amino acids come in different flavors. Most amino acids taste sweet or bitter, but two of them are umami flavored, aspartate and glutamate. And when I say they’re umami flavored, let me be more accurate. These two amino acids <i>are</i> the umami flavor, especially glutamate, which triggers our umami taste receptors much more strongly than aspartate. It’s also one of the most common amino acids in all proteins.

So now I’m going to tell you a story. In 1907, Japanese chemistry professor Kikunae Ikeda was eating dinner with his wife and he had an epiphany. He realized that there was a savory flavor in the kombu dashi they were eating and he was convinced that it was a fifth taste. He called this taste “umami,” which means “deliciousness.”

Now Dr. Ikeda wasn’t just some schlub. He studied chemistry in Germany under Wilhelm Oswald, the person who established chemistry as a separate discipline and who won a Nobel prize in chemistry. Ikeda went to Germany because he saw the Germans as a healthy robust people, and he wanted to use science to help his own people become bigger and stronger. So Ikeda went to his lab and he evaporated a lot of kombu broth and he found these brown crystals left behind which he analyzed and identified as glutamate. He then set to work to create a stable version of this amino acid so that it could easily be used in cooking to add more savoriness. He found that he could create a stable salt by combining it with sodium. Ikada produced this salt MSG from seaweed and he created a company called Ajinomoto which means, “the essence of taste.” MSG is now produced in much larger quantities using bacterial fermentation.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that we finally identified the umami taste receptors both on the tongue and in the stomach. But sadly, over a hundred years after its discovery, MSG is still one of the most misunderstood ingredients in our kitchens. So to understand it better, let’s take a step back and talk about salts.

Salts are made from charged molecules called ions that stick together like magnets. Table salt is made of sodium ions and chloride ions. Baking soda is also a salt between sodium and bicarbonate. Sodium acetate is a salt used in a lot of processed foods like dry soup and ramen mixes, meats, and snack foods. Soap is a salt formed from sodium and fatty acids. Sodium laural sulfate, the foaming agent in toothpaste and in a lot of beauty products is also a salt. Has anyone here ever had orange juice after brushing your teeth? You know why it tastes so terrible? It’s because the sodium laurel sulfate in the toothpaste inhibits your tongue sweet receptors and amplifies your bitter receptors. Orange juice just has a fair amount of bitterness in it naturally, but it’s normally masked by the sugar in it.

Most salts we use in our home and in cooking are sodium salts. MSG is simply a salt of sodium and the amino acid glutamate.

MSG first came to the US in 1915, and by the 1930s it was used liberally by many companies like Campbell’s. Around the same time, the use of MSG also became common in Chinese restaurants across the country. During World War II, the US began adding MSG to field rations to improve their flavor. It was used in many processed foods and snacks, even baby foods. MSG was also popular in home cooking. The joy of cooking called it, “the mysterious white powder of the Orient.”

The concerns about chemicals and foods started in 1962 when Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, exposing the environmental damage and health risks caused by pesticides like DDT, many of which found their way into our food supply. The book helped spark a broader public awareness and concern about dangerous chemicals in food. This led to the ban of DDT and it was a turning point in both public perception and government regulation of environmental and food safety issues.

In 1968, a Chinese doctor wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine reporting that after eating northern Chinese food, he experienced symptoms he thought might be related to the cooking wine, MSG, or excessive salt in the food. and he was just reaching out to other doctors for help in researching his symptoms.

Reader responses poured in with similar complaints and scientists jumped to the chance to weigh in. An epidemic of misinformation spread over the following years, accompanied by specious statements from doctors and terrible reporting. And still today, despite hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing otherwise, many people still hold false beliefs about MSG.

Here’s an example from the Chicago Tribune. “A business executive order orders shrimp with lobster sauce at his favorite Chinese restaurant, eats it with gusto and chopsticks, and within 20 minutes gets dizzy, nauseous, feels the onset of a blinding headache, and fears that he may be having a heart attack. A magazine editor sits down to an order of mushu pork, takes a few delicate bites, and suddenly feels a burning, a tightness, a numbness in her upper arms, throat, neck, and face. She also has an irresistible urge to take off all of her clothes, which she manages to resist. Many Chinese food patrons report the taste of the food turns them on sexually. It makes you feel a little crazy, says a professor at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. The psychiatrist identified the cause of his wife’s depression with a test dose of wonton soup.”

Unbelievable, right? This terrible article was just one of many filled with offensive comments and absurd statements from doctors. Let me be clear. No studies have shown any causal links between reported symptoms and normal amounts of dietary MSG. When you eat glutamates, your body doesn’t know or care whether it came from a mushroom or from a bottle. And it uses these glutamates just like any other amino acid: as a fuel source, as a building block to synthesize new proteins, or as a precursor for other molecules. Tomatoes are rich in glutamates, and that’s one reason that ketchup is such a great condiment on a hamburger. Cheese, aside from being delicious on its own, is also loaded with glutamates, especially aged cheese. Adding these additional glutamates to what’s already in the meat, makes the hamburger taste even more meaty.

In this next clip, we will see firsthand the power of umami. I love the umami flavor. Stop being so pretentious, Kyle. Sorry. [the full clip is in the notes below.] Oh my god, it’s so much better. It’s crazy.

Now, I want to take a minute and out and pull out the samples that you were given. These samples are all mayonnaise. First, taste sample A. Now, taste sample B. How is it different? And now taste sample C.

Who likes A better? A few of you. Who likes B? Okay, a few more. And C, most of you. Sample A is plain Helman’s mayonnaise. Sample B has 0.4% MSG added. And sample C has only one-third the amount of MSG in sample B, but it has two other ingredients, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. Now, everyone’s heard of MSG, but most people, including many chefs, aren’t familiar with disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. They may sound scary, but they are also common molecules found in all life, and they are harmless to eat in normal dietary amounts.

Guanylate is one of the four nucleotides that makes RNA, the molecules that build our proteins. And inosinate helps make ATP, the rechargeable batteries we talked about earlier that provide energy to run our cells.

And by the way, when I talk about normal dietary amounts, I simply mean: don’t eat a pound of MSG on an empty stomach. Also, don’t eat a pound of salt on an empty stomach or a quart of lemon juice. None of these is going to agree with you.

Inosinate and guanylate, also called GMP, don’t add any flavor on their own, but they greatly enhance the umami taste by allowing glutamates to bind to our taste receptors for a longer amount of time. The presence of these molecules can actually boost the umami flavor by 10 times over glutamates alone. And what’s really amazing is how little is needed. One gram is enough for 22 pounds of mayonnaise. So, it’s not surprising that kombu seaweed and katsuobushi fish flakes are used so often together in Japanese cuisine. Kombu is a rich source of glutamate and katsuobushi is a rich source of inosinate. So, together they’re the original umami bomb.

Many chefs are afraid or embarrassed to use MSG, but that’s silly. That’s like being afraid of using salt or sugar or acid in your cooking. If you learn to season properly with MSG and other sources of glutamates, your food will be elevated as much as if you learn to season properly with salt or acid. Glutamates also cause salivation, which makes the meat seem even more juicy.

And finally, just to drive the point home, here are three substances. Salt, sugar, and MSG. Each one is detected by a different taste receptor. The ions in table salt chemically interact with our salty receptors. Other salts like potassium chloride also interact with these receptors and produce a sense of saltiness. In the case of table sugar (sucrose), it binds to our sweet receptors. Other molecules can also bind to our sweet receptors, including other sugars like maltose or lactose and other non-sugar molecules like those in artificial sweeteners.

However, in the case of umami, glutamate and aspartate are the only molecules that activate these receptors. And aspartate only provides a very weak umami taste. So that means that when you taste meatiness in foods, you’re tasting glutamate, the same molecule that’s in MSG.

Now, if you closed your eyes and I gave you some salt, how many of you could tell me that what you taste is saltiness? If I gave you some sugar, how many of you could tell me that what you taste is sweetness? If I gave you MSG, how many of you would be able to tell me that what you taste is umami? You’re probably not sure on this last one. We learn from a young age, here’s a cookie, doesn’t that taste sweet? Or, “Isn’t that pretzel salty?” But who teaches their kids, “Here’s some glutamate. Doesn’t that taste umami?”

Umami is a universally like taste, and it’s the first thing that we taste as humans since it’s in the amniotic fluid. Without training, it’s difficult for people to know the taste directly, but we know that something tastes good when it’s there.

Discerning this taste is a skill that takes a little training, but it’s not hard to do. Take some lightly salted broth and divide it. Add 0.4% MSG by weight to one half and then taste them side by side. After a while, you’ll learn what the umami taste is on its own. This is a vital skill that all chefs should have so that they can season their foods correctly, not just with salt and acid, but also with umami. It will radically improve a chef’s ability to elevate the foods that they make.

When we age cheese, when we smoke or age meat, when we use enzymes like bromelain or ficin, when we cook meat slowly at low temperatures… all of these techniques create more free amino acids, changing the flavors of the foods that they’re in. That is why, for example, aged cheeses like Parmesiano Reggiano have more umami than younger cheeses like a mild cheddar. It’s because the longer the enzymes that break down the proteins have to work, the more glutamates are released from the proteins.

Add umami to your Brussels sprouts, and it transforms them. And it doesn’t have to be MSG. You can use fish sauce or soy sauce or parmesean cheese… anything that provides glutamates. But try it with MSG first just to see the difference that the addition of glutamates makes without adding other taste and aroma components.

So that’s the first half of the story. MSG has been villainized, but it’s completely harmless. And the two parts that make it up, sodium and glutamate, are found naturally in many, many foods.

How many of you avoid foods with locusts? Just kidding.

Doctors Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer have spent the last 40 years researching how organisms obtain, process, and utilize nutrients. The research started with a question of whether animals ate indiscriminately, their appetites driven by calories for fuel, or if they were more deliberate in their diets. They started by studying locusts known for their ravenous and seemingly indiscriminate appetites. They fed one group of locusts only protein and another group only carbohydrates. And then they gave both groups access to foods containing different mixtures of pro proteins and carbohydrates. What they found was astonishing and revolutionized the way that we think about and understand nutrition.

The locusts that were deprived of protein would next select and eat foods richer in protein. And those deprived of carbohydrates would eat foods richer in carbohydrates. But more importantly, the locusts prioritize protein over all other nutrients when their food options were limited.

I interviewed them some time ago, and this is how they explained it: “We began by exploring the locust capacity to regulate not only their intake of food, but their intake of specific nutrients. And we discovered that they, like everything else that we’ve studied since, have specific nutrient appetites. Animals don’t just feel hungry or full. They feel hungry for protein or for carbohydrates or for salts. And those appetites help the animal select foods that balance its diet, making up for a shortfall in one nutrient by selecting foods that are rich in that nutrient and avoiding foods that contain too much. So this was the first real insight that animals have these specific appetites. If you put an animal into an environment where it can’t choose, then the protein appetite is dominant. It’s the one that they care about the most. So, the animals will eat too much of everything else to get enough protein.” The entire interview is available at chefsvillage.org.

If an animal needs a 1:1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein, they need to eat along <i>this</i> line to have a balanced diet. If they eat foods higher in protein or foods higher in carbohydrates, then they need to adjust their diet to get back on track. Animals also have an ideal amount of nutrition that they need. When they have the right amount and ratio of nutrition, it’s called their intake target. This diet is balanced but with too little intake. And this diet is balanced but with too much intake.

So let’s say an animal finds a food high in protein. They will next look for foods higher in carbohydrates. Now they need to eat more of the first food and the right amount of it to reach their ideal intake target. Slime molds need a ratio of 2:1 protein to carbohydrate. This is an actual video of slime molds sending out its plasmodium, the arms that look like tendrils, looking for food and glomming onto the food with this ratio.

After studying insects and molds, they studied mice, herbivores, carnivores, and finally primates, including humans. And almost universally, animals prioritize proteins over all other nutrients. This work led to their Protein Leverage Theory. Now, in common parlence, a theory is just a conjecture, like, “I have a theory about why I wake up with no blankets every morning.” But in science, a theory is an explanation that has been heavily tested and confirmed. Gravity is a theory. All living things being made of cells is also a theory. In the case of protein leverage, there’s 40 years of research in hundreds of species, including humans, showing this to be true.

There are so many nutrients and there’s so much complexity in food environments. It would be impossible for any animal to calculate what to eat at any given time. But biology guides the animal to get the foods that it needs through its appetite. They found, for example, that the ratio of protein to carbohydrates directly affects lifespan — even in humans. A smaller ratio of protein in the diet leads to a longer life. They did a fascinating study with drosophila, a species of fruit fly, and when given the choice of foods, the flies ate a diet that prioritized fecundity (how many offspring they produced) over longevity. So why does so much of what we learn about nutrition and appetite come back to protein?

Because our bodies can convert protein to carbohydrates or fats or convert between carbohydrates and fats as needed. But unlike other macronutrients, protein contains nitrogen. So we have to eat protein to obtain that nitrogen. Animals can store fat in vast quantities and we store sugar in the form of glycogen. But our bodies have no way to store protein. And since we can’t store proteins, there’s also no use in eating too much protein in a day.

High levels of proteins are actually toxic to the body. Most Americans eat far more protein than they need, and the excess protein just gets converted to carbohydrates and fats. The unused nitrogen is converted to urea and excreted. So, we have to eat protein every day in order to supply our body with the amino acids that it needs to build all the proteins to run our biology. When there’s too little available, our bodies have to break down proteins already in use, like muscles, to meet our needs.

All whole foods contain protein, even apples. And all whole foods contain all 20 amino acids. But foods have different mixes of these amino acids. If the mix is very close to human needs, we call it a complete protein. Rice is not a complete protein since it’s low in the amino acid lysine. But if you eat enough rice, you’ll get all the amino acids your body needs, including lysine. Beans are low in methionine and cystine. However, if you eat rice and beans together, you can eat less than half the amount of food and still get all the amino acids your body needs.

When a food is a complete protein and is also easily digestible, it’s called a quality protein. Quinoa is a complete protein, but because its digestibility score is low, it’s not considered a quality protein. Potatoes are a quality protein. They have a very similar mix of amino acids to human needs, and they’re easily digestible. That means that you could eat nothing but potatoes and do okay. But potatoes are only about 10% protein and 85% carbohydrate. So they’re not as good of a source of protein as eggs, which have about 55% protein. Eggs are also the gold standard for quality proteins. Their amino acid mix is very close to human needs, even better than beef. They’re easily digestible and they have a high level of satiety, which means you’ll feel full longer after eating them than you do after eating many other proteins.

An animal’s protein target is the ideal percentage of protein in its diet. For humans, that’s around 15 to 20%. And remarkably, whether we’re a vegetarian or omnivore, we almost always end up eating that amount of protein without consciously trying. And that’s because your body knows how much protein it’s getting. And you will have a hunger for protein when your intake for the day is low. But some things can change a person’s protein target. A pregnant mother’s diet can permanently raise the protein target of her offspring, leading to difficulties for her children in controlling their weight.

So, how do we take advantage of our body’s natural appetite system? You’ve all heard Michael Pollen’s advice, eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Drs. Simpson and Raubenheimer have their own advice, which I love. “Shop with your brain and eat with your appetite.” That is to say, go to the grocery store when you’re not hungry; purchase good, healthful foods; bring them home; and then let your appetite guide you to what your body needs.

Where the system breaks down is highly processed junk foods. In a natural food environment, umami flavors tell us that the food that we’re eating contains protein. After all, glutamate comes from protein and only from protein. So, our biology has evolved to respond to umami when we need protein. But the processed food industry is tricking our bodies by providing umami flavors in foods that contain little protein and are thus cheaper to make because protein is expensive.

Barbecue flavored chips are almost entirely fat and carbohydrates, but they taste like they have more protein than they do because they contain MSG. So our response is to eat more of them when we’re craving protein, and that exacerbates our need for protein rather than satiates it. These foods are called protein decoys.

Your appetite is driven by hormones like FGF-21, which is released when your body needs protein. FGF-21 makes you crave umami flavors. But if that craving makes you reach for barbecue flavored chips, then your appetite system is being hacked. And what’s worse, eating those foods actually throws your nutrient balance further out of whack. It doesn’t satisfy your need for protein. It intensifies it.

Even if a person wants to eat healthful foods, financial resources and food deserts may limit their access to quality proteins, fruits, and vegetables. These problems make following our appetite in a way that biology intended very difficult. And being chronically confined to these diets leads to obesity and many health issues.

This target shows the proper nutrient balance for a particular animal. But if the foods that it eats are too high in carbohydrates and fats, the animal has three choices. A, it can eat the right amount of carbohydrate and fats, but have a deficit in its protein target. B, it can eat enough of the food to get the correct amount of calories for the day, but it still will have not met its protein target. or C, it can continue to eat until it has met its protein target, resulting in a huge overconumption of carbohydrates and fats. This third option is what humans and most other animals do. And this problem results from both protein decoys and from food systems that lack good protein sources.

Because human appetites prioritize protein over other nutrients, we will continue to be driven to satisfy that appetite even after our caloric needs for the day have been met.

So, is MSG bad? Well, it’s not dangerous to eat, and it can greatly enhance the dishes you create. But when it’s used to trick your body into thinking it’s getting protein when it’s not, that’s where we start to run into trouble.

So, that’s just a peek behind the curtain. I wanted to give an 18-part series, but the ACF said, “no.’

By empowering our students with this kind of knowledge, we give our future culinary professionals a deeper understanding of how food works. And we also give them a glimpse of the beauty and wonder of nature and science.

So to close, I’d like to suggest three core principles that you can incorporate into your teaching. First, encourage students to ask why things happen. Not only to ask you why, but to ask themselves. Second, use food science to develop critical thinking. Instead of teaching methods and recipes as unquestioned traditions, challenge your students to make alterations to recipes that will change fundamental things about how they turn out. When students understand the mechanisms behind culinary techniques and ingredients, they become better problem solvers and they’re able to troubleshoot, adapt recipes, and innovate with confidence. And last, food is more than just production, more than just craft. It’s an evolving science practiced by a large community of connected people, one that they are capable of contributing to no matter what their educational background.

By empowering their mindset and confidence, they will become truly thoughtful, innovative culinary professionals, people who will carry our profession forward with skill, passion, and purpose.

So, I asked you all a bunch of questions today. And if you’ll indulge me, I’ve got just two last questions for you. Who will leave here remembering everything that you learned in today’s talk? And who will leave here thinking differently about proteins? Thank you very much. [Applause] [Music] [Applause]