Carbs, Fats, and Proteins: How Misappropriation of Biochemistry Distorts Our Relations with Food

Abstract

This case study is a critique of how biochemistry has been touted as the hegemonic paradigm through which modern societies interpret food. As dazzling advances like vitamin discovery transformed nutrition and public health, the study argues that reduction of food to its molecular components—carbs, fats, and proteins—has corrupted scientific inquiry as well as cultural interaction with eating. By using instances such as the rise in personal diets supported by apps and glucose monitors, the thesis demonstrates how discourse about individual optimization promotes consumerism while ignoring larger ethical issues such as labor, sustainability, and food justice. The narrative emphasizes how the reduction of foods into abstract nutrients deprives them of cultural, ecological, and social settings, reducing meals to commodities bereft of location and human connection. From molecular gastronomy to internet diet crazes, this molecular reductionism gives the impression of control while displacing more complex views of agriculture, tradition, and community. The study encourages rethinking the construction of science, technology, and marketing into our experience of eating and challenges students to imagine more inclusive, sustainable, and culture-sensitive ways of enjoying food alongside its biochemical definition.