Former chef to teach scientific secrets behind art of cooking

Why would anyone deliberately eat a chili pepper called the Carolina Reaper?

Few people are better placed to explain the interaction between humans and food than Brant Pohorelic, a former chef who is now a biologist at the University of Calgary. He will be teaching a summer course called the Science of Food and Cooking.

A technician in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Science, Pohorelic’s career has included research at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, but he paid for his education as a student by working in the kitchens of some of Calgary’s top restaurants. “Cooking is an art form you can spend your whole life studying, but underlying any art is science,” he says.

Peppers provide pain and pleasure

Chili peppers contain capsaicin, a molecule that creates a burning sensation in mammals. Although the substance partly evolved in chili peppers to ward off certain animals, the intense pain from eating plants such as the Carolina Reaper — rated the hottest-tasting in the world — can also activate pleasure-creating endorphins in humans.

Pohorelic laughs as he considers the paradox of people turning a deeply unpleasant experience into a delicious part of popular cuisines such as that of Mexico and India. “I will be using capsaicin as a model for my students to understand molecular structure and food,” he says.

As a first-year course for non-biology majors, Pohorelic’s class will be open to everyone from arts or commerce students to people from outside the campus. “It’s for anybody who wants to try and increase their knowledge about the food they eat,” he says.

Besides take-home cooking assignments, the course will include discussions by guest lecturers ranging from an expert on cheese making to an ice cream maker. Neurobiologist Wic Wildering, an associate professor and incoming director of the Neuroscience Program in the Faculty of Science, will describe the physiology of taste and what it does to our brains.

Course dives into cuisine of the future

“We’re going to be looking at everything from modern agricultural practices right down to the chemical reactions that take place by cooking food,” says Pohorelic, who will also outline how the complex community of micro-organisms, or gut flora, in the digestive tract affects the human body. “There are actually more cells within our bodies that are not human than there are human cells,” he says.

Pohorelic will also look at how food laboratories are pioneering the cuisine of the future. These include a chemical reaction that creates spheres of jelly using a special type of carbohydrate derived from seaweed, he says.

“I am going to talk about what they’re doing in those kitchens to create these wonderful spheres with liquid inside them,” he says. “The liquid can be anything from alcohol to fruit jellies to savoury purees.”