Daily bread
What can we learn from a humble lump of dough?
Imagine a loaf of bread, quartered. The first quarter solves hunger. Another quarter brings you a companion. Your worldview determines whether you share this quarter early on or you wait a while. Perhaps you even share it first, before you partake.
The third quarter you trade for something to eat with that bread, a most basic version of trade economy.
The final quarter builds security. By sharing it, you create more companions, who may have when one day you lack. Or you may sell it and reinvest the gains of your labour.
Mind you, you could just go to the store and buy a sliced loaf. It's cheaper. In today's Canada, says Amy Kaler, associate chair of the Department of Sociology, making bread by hand is not about physical necessity, as in rural, non-industrial communities. Here, it's about identity and connection among people.
"Loneliness is one of the surprising factors in food insecurity," says Juanita Gnanapragasam, '16 BSc, '19 MPH. For her, making and breaking bread together is one key to combatting food insecurity among foreign students, the focus of her research.
Gnanapragasam scheduled a wintertime roti-making workshop. "I'd expected 12 to 17 students, but within three hours, over 80 had signed up!" she said. "And in January, the darkest, coldest part of the year."
Cooking and eating alone provokes homesickness, so students often rely on takeout. And some young students may have limited experience in the kitchen. Roti is simple - flour, water and salt, shaped by hand, fried. Participants showed great pride in their hand-built creations and the making transformed strangers into friends.
Whether it's a simple fried roti or something more elaborate, bread connects us to the land, our own abilities and each other. Bread carries history. And what of the future? Our staples rest in a web of industrialized agriculture and international trade. So, what happens if that web is torn? If climate change causes industrial-scale crop failures? If uneasy political tides interrupt trade?
Imagine a day when we have only the food we can make. Now build a loaf of bread by hand and quarter it.
Does lab-grown beef have a place on our tables?
Presenting the 5Ws of the petri patty
WHO: The director of New Harvest, Isha Datar, '09 BSc, loves beef. But she says "the density and number of animals we're dealing with on factory farms is reaching global limits." That's why she founded the non-profit at the forefront of cellular agriculture.
WHAT: New Harvest specializes in projects that grow cultured food, including meat, in a lab, with the hope the process becomes mainstream. Think of it as the "meatri dish" solution to sustainable meat.
WHERE: From their offices in New York, New Harvest funds and conducts public, collaborative research to advance discoveries in cellular agriculture.
WHEN: It's happening now, with cultured animal products created and underway. However, commercialization is still in the future.
HOW: Take a few cells from an animal's muscle tissue and seed them on a scaffold on which the cells can grow. Next, put the seeded scaffold in a nutrient-rich liquid medium, then add the works to a bioreactor. Boom, you are growing meat in a facility without vast tracts of land or huge consumption of energy. But it's not that easy. Obstacles include creating an edible scaffold and a stable liquid medium that is not derived from animals. (Now liquid media are usually made from serum taken from the blood of fetal cows.) And then scaling it up and making it affordable.
WHY: The big carbon footprint of a steak comes from the energy, feed and water that goes into raising and housing the animal. Not to mention methane and other greenhouse gases livestock emit. Creating meat in a lab could address those issues.
True hunger is never far away: how cities face tough times
How long until we eat the zoo?
When the Prussians closed the roads during their siege of Paris in 1870-71, food shipments ceased and larders depleted, starving the city into submission. Parisians resorted to eating cats and dogs, rats and pigeons and, finally, zoo animals. It sounds shocking, but how long would it take a modern city to follow that same path?
Common wisdom says we have about three days of food on hand but it's hard to put an exact number on it, says Mary Beckie, an associate professor in the Faculty of Extension with expertise in sustainable agriculture and rural development. "Our food system is incredibly complex," she says. While some of us stockpile, others have only the remains of last night's takeout. How we'd cope under siege would vary according to resources in our neighbourhoods and households.
During the First and Second World Wars, urban vegetable gardening was a duty in the face of food rationing; plots in backyards and communities were called victory gardens. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in urban agriculture that Beckie counts as a hopeful sign. Community gardens have waitlists, and municipalities are supporting the movement.
"In Saskatoon, for example, the city provides water, composting and mulch to every community garden," she says. In 2018, the City of Edmonton started a pilot program, offering vacant lots to what it calls "conscientious gardeners who want to cultivate food on municipal land."
More significantly, new interest in food production is building outside cities. Beckie says Statistics Canada's 2016 census noted that, for the first time, there was an increase in the number of young people taking up farming. Take heart: outside the ramparts, crops are still growing.
Test your palate
Picky eaters take note: taste perception is not immutable
We spoke to Wendy Wismer, '83 BSc(FoodSci), associate professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food & Nutritional Science, to find out a little about how taste works. Her research offers insight into (among other things) how hormones, age, illness and medication can change flavour perception. She offers some expert advice on how picky eaters can learn to love more grub. To expand your palate, it might help to know how your sense of taste works.
Wismer says one of the following is behind about 40 per cent of how we perceive taste.
Your brain
Incorrect
No, but your brain is crucial, too. Understanding flavour might help you master cravings for junk food, which has been engineered to trigger what Wismer calls a hedonic reward, that good feeling you get when you dive into a bag of Cheezies. The more highly processed the snack, the likelier it is to deliver a quick hit to all five of the discrete tastes picked up by your taste receptors.
Your tastebuds
Incorrect
No, but variations among individuals also affect flavour. About half of you have an average density of taste receptors on your tongues. (Everyone has them in cheeks, gums and gastrointestinal tracts, too.) A quarter of you have fewer receptors, and another quarter are "supertasters," with numerous, densely packed taste receptors.
Your nose
Correct
Yes, smell is about 40 per cent of how we perceive flavour. "Aroma lends character to food," Wismer says. Our perception of flavour is also affected by factors such as colour, cooking method or even temperature. Two mugs of milk - one hot, one cold - just don't taste the same.
Your habits
Incorrect
No, but if you reach for the same meal day after day, you could be what Wismer calls a "food neophobe," reluctant or afraid to try new dishes. She recommends you challenge your gustatory regimen - slowly. "Make subtle changes," she says. "Try one new taste or flavour per week."
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Deserts and swamps
Some neighbourhoods lack access to food. Others are awash with opportunities to eat badly
When we think of a North American food desert, we imagine a gritty city centre with shuttered businesses and few services, like Baltimore or Detroit, says Brent Swallow, a professor in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology. While there haven't been systematic Canadian studies, he says there have been several one-offs that suggest a different pattern. Researchers like Swallow and his colleague Feng Qiu have found food deserts in surprising places.
What are they? A food desert is an urban neighbourhood with no supermarket within one kilometre of its centre. It's a threat to local food security, which the United Nations defines as access to affordable, acceptable and nutritious food. Qiu has found eight food deserts in Edmonton and two in Calgary. (There are none in Montreal, Swallow says.)
What do they have in common? These neighbourhoods have areas of higher density and a population with less access to cars and a lower median income. Often new Canadians live there, as do seniors. "These neighbourhoods used to be served by supermarkets in strip malls," Swallow says.
Where are they? Qiu found that food deserts in Edmonton lie in a ring of older suburban areas between downtown and the newer neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city. Think of the blank space around a bullseye.
Not just calories: Food security means access to affordable, acceptable and nutritious food. "We also consider people's perceptions or their worries about where the next meal is coming from," says Swallow. In North America, food-insecure places feature access to highly processed, less nutritious foods - like fast-food restaurants - and can lead to people being overweight, a predictor of health problems such as diabetes.
How to help? Check out Grocery Run, a program to help families find same-day food, says co-ordinator Sandra Ngo, '12 BSc(Nutr/Food), '16 MSc. It aims to help clients in emergency situations, and it distributes food within 24 hours. It's also a food-waste-reduction strategy that redirects healthful food, such as day-old loaves from local bakeries, from the landfill to dinner tables.
Save our seeds
Researchers are developing crop seeds for a variety of climate conditions and banking them for future use. "When my grandparents came to Alberta they saved seed after every harvest. Really this is what we're doing. It is connected to a much broader, very co-ordinated, but simple system. We save seed - new seed varieties that we develop here that then go into farmers' fields - so we have those genetic resources available for the next 10 generations."
- Stan Blade, '81 BSc, dean of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences
Three things about sustenance
Experts are caring for field and stream, plate and planet
Test the waters: Want to know what's in the glass? Parmiss Mojir Shaibani, '12 MSc, '17 PhD, and her husband, Amirreza Sohrabi, '12 MSc, '17 PhD, invented a handheld sensor that tests drinking water on-site for E. coli, a microscopic bacterium that can sicken people and animals. Easy to use anywhere, the sensor reduces test time, cuts costs and needs no special expertise to use.
Leftovers: Using waste from potato processing, U of A researchers led by Marleny Aranda Saldaña have created a cling-film for storing food. The film will biodegrade, rather than lasting centuries in the landfill. And treating the starch-based film with custom nanoparticles has the potential to keep foods fresher longer.
Crickets? Jiminy! Turns out, cricket flour is slightly earthy and nutty in taste. Claudio La Rocca, '16 MSc, and Silvia Ronzani co-own Camola Sustainable Foods, which produces baked goods prepared with a flour that includes the ground bugs. Cricket flour is high in protein and is packed with nutrients, such as iron, calcium, potassium and vitamin B12. And insect protein is more sustainable to produce than animal protein.
The talent
Helen Metella, Mifi Purvis, '93 BA, Matt Schneider, '07 BA(Hons), '09 MA, Anna Marie Sewell, '91 BA(Spec) and Lesley Young, '94 BA