Food = interaction
The way we experience food is much more complex than taste only. Food is influenced through the interaction with and between our senses.
How important is our nose and how does that influence the food and combinations we like?
Can color change the way we perceive food? And what about sound, touch, the setting, do they interact with food?
Let's explore modes where one will taste, smell, touch, hear food in ways never experienced before.
Bernard Lahousse
About Bernard: Armed with a master's degree in bio-engineering and intellectual property rights, Bernard Lahousse makes it his life work to ponder the intersections of food and science. He has worked as a research and development manager at several food companies, and as a consultant for innovation processes for various global enterprises.
In 2007, at Lo Major de la Gastronomia in San Sebastián, Lahousse launched the interactive website www.foodpairing.be. The site features easy-to-follow graphs, known as “foodpairing trees,” with branches of other foods that share common basic flavor profiles on a molecular level; the purpose for which is to help inspire chefs and anyone interested in food to experiment with new combinations. The site was met with immediate success and has evolved into a useful tool for chefs and mixologists alike. In 2009, Lahousse organized a Foodpairing event in Belgium where several of the world's greatest chefs, including Peter Goossens, Sergio Herman, Heston Blumenthal, and Albert Adrià, discussed how they use the Foodpairing concept as a vision for their own creations.
Lahousse's passion for food and innovation has also lead him, along with Johan Langenbick and Peter Coucquyt, to start the Belgian-based food research company Sense for Taste in 2009. The company's mission is to develop methodologies to support chefs in their creativity and create tools for the food industry to develop more efficient food products. Lahousse puts his bio-engineering degree to good use as the company's science director. Sense for Taste is currently working on a portfolio of several new food technologies that will enable the food industry and chefs to make better tasting all-natural products.