Appetite Studies: Food Science
This piece is part of a series that responds to the theme of the 2025 Cleveland Humanities Festival: “Appetite.”
Food Science
The genius would be like—do you know the two
ways to eat a beer glass? Like that was a situation
we were often in. He’d learned it from Jasper Gallon.
They used to run a lab. You never know how life
will work out, the genius said. Who’d have thought
that two guys who were roommates at the same elite
university would one day work together at that same
elite university. The first day of the seminar,
he had us arrange ourselves by height. A lesson
about systolic and diastolic pressure. This was at the Institute
of Food. He was famous for localization. Like how
Doritos in Mexico are thicker. He got it down
to the county. That was also with chips. For example,
how crushed? How crushed should they be? Knox
County, for instance. They like them crushed.
Basically a powder. Quaffable. “It’s finally OK to drink
and drive…chips.” That was the billboard.
And the gnarled little knobs, those excrescences
that sometimes slip through the fryer? Some places
love them. It feels like a prize. One summer,
he had us drive back and forth from Fremont
County, Colorado, to Custer County. Counties
with the most proximal change, vis a vis chip preference.
What they call an ecotone. It felt like a different world,
opening a bag of chips in Westcliffe, after a morning
in Galena. The first way, he said, is you embed
the pieces in your gums. You don’t really eat it.
It looks like you do. He was a very good teacher.
He could make anybody cry. He’d glower something like,
“It seems like you’re still afraid of something.” And
you’d cry. But then he got distracted by politics. He was mad
that Jasper, known for being awkward/obnoxious,
had been awkward/obnoxious, and then felt awkward.
He and the genius blamed “diversity.” The logic
was hard to follow. They supported legislation
that would limit strikes, protest, equity, protections
for immigrants, trans rights at places less privileged
than they’d ever worked. They were the real victims.
They worked harder than anyone. They were the smartest
boys. We never learned the second way. I was afraid
we wouldn’t get to my reading response. He once
told us an airbag can break your nose and save you,
like in a crash, so, here, let me break your nose.