Artists Fend Off Food Extinction Threat With Taste 'Illusion'
By Ian Bush
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Food for thought from two artists: they're giving people the chance to taste flavors like chocolate, peanut butter, and fish without actually eating them. It's the kickoff event for the annual DesignPhiladelphia Festival.
If you're a chocoholic, you'd rather have your treat and eat it too, but what if cocoa becomes hard to come by -- a casualty of climate change, as some scientists warn.
"We would like people to have this personal experience of what the future might bring."
Artists Miriam Songster and Miriam Simun invite you to chew over that vision of 2033 with their GhostFood mobile trailer.
"To see if this a good enough substitute. Or if there's maybe something else we need to do."
To chow down, you wear a 3-D printed headset equipped with a scent pod.
"If you decide to order cod, you're going to eat a piece of food made from climate resilient foodstuffs that simulate the texture of cod, and you're going to smell the scent of prepared cod."
Giving you, Simun says, the "simulated taste experience" of cod, in the form of veggie protein and algae:
"As you'll be able to eat it if it comes the day where there's no longer cod left in the ocean. All of the complexity of taste is actually an olfactory experience. Most of that comes retronasally, which means it comes through your throat, but some of that is orthonasally, which means that it comes through your nose."
Their GhostFood truck is in Kensington from 6 to 9 tonight for ticketholders to the pop-up cocktail party and benefit for the 9th annual DesignPhiladelphia festival.
