Food

13 articles
  • Leornard_HERO

    Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food

    How the chili pepper got to China.

  • Tattersal_HERO

    The Neuroscience of Wine

    Why our minds can be led astray about the tastes of wines.

  • Vanderbilt_HERO-F2

    The Colors We Eat

    Food color does more than guide us—it changes the experience of taste.

  • Article Image

    How Your Brain Gaslights You—for Your Own Good

    Nailia Schwarz via Shutterstock Runners can tell you that sometimes the last mile of a run seems to feel dramatically longer than the first. This perceptual distortion isn’t limited to brains addled by exercise—it’s a consistent feature of our minds.   Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . When we […]

  • Article Image

    How to Avoid the Desperate Future of “Interstellar”

    In 2011 America’s astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, was on Real Time with Bill Maher discussing the proposed termination of NASA’s James Webb Telescope, which the House Appropriations Committee had decried as “billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.” Tyson went on to deliver what is now one of his most famous quotes:  Nautilus […]

  • Gracia Lam mayo LeVaus

    Why Is the Merger Called Mayonnaise Loved—& Hated—so Deeply?

    While a strong trend in the culinary arts has been to let individual, natural ingredients shine through, one food has quietly come to dominate the retail market by merging a group of incongruous ingredients together. Mayonnaise, that familiar white goop hiding in your sandwich and coleslaw, is officially the most valuable condiment in the nation. […]

  • tempeh tower

    Want Fungus in That? Our Delicious & Useful Rotten Foods

    Imagine a bowl of half-cooked beans coated in a layer of fibrous, white mold. Dotted across the surface of the mold are little black and blue spores. It smells faintly of ammonia.Sound appetizing? It might seem too much like the remnants of last week’s edamame, but that moldy bean cake, or tempeh, is a vegan […]
  • The_Incredibly_Weird_733x550.jpg

    Your Very Weird, Very Personal Sense of Smell

    We’re used to the idea that some among us are colorblind, perceiving the world differently because of a quirk in their genetics. And it’s well-known that teenagers and young adults can hear high-pitched sounds that their elders cannot, an ability that’s been exploited by manufacturers of The Mosquito, an anti-loitering device that annoys youth into leaving.But […]