What noma Taught Me About the Perception of Sweetness
A researcher at Copenhagen’s Nordic Food Lab—the epicentre of New Nordic Cuisine, writes about the experience with sugar and the "noma effect"...Please read on. We urge you to then read the full article. Sugar is like a hot water bottle. It soothes emotional pain, comforts us and provides an immediate time machine back to our childhoods. But of course, as we’ve come to learn, sugar has also made a shocking impact on global health....
The huge gap in perceiving sweetness became tangible at the lab when an intern from Pune, India, came onboard with bags filled with Indian desserts. We all loved the gesture, but, whether it was down to our diverging genotypes, our sociocultural upbringings, personal preference, or simply the proximity of noma, the crew wasn’t too sweet on those Indian pastries.
My first meal at noma was an eye-opening experience when it comes to sweetness. René’s “Never use sugar. Sugar is the Enemy” mantra rang in my mind as the meal was reaching its finale, and, it turned out, the desserts at Noma were precisely to my taste. Refined sugar is avoided there, and is often replaced by local honey. To those used to a diet far richer in refined sugar, the run of desserts at noma can be quite a shock to the system. However, I’d wager that the vast influence of New Nordic Cuisine—spearheaded by René and noma—has affected both chefs’ and consumers’ perceptions of sweetness across the world.
There are quit a few episodes and a dozen other video's of this duo around the web, but fuck, this one is our fav...so inspiring and it's the first one we actually saw and were so inspired, there was nothing to do but go...GO to the kitchen and cook our asses off (while playing the Grateful Dead). Definitely read more about this episode here.