After being filled with elephant pooh, human pooh, and Yoko Ono for far too long, American museums can finally celebrate something worthwhile. I am speaking, of course, about breakfast cereal. Just check out the important work being done in this video:
Usually, any video featuring nervous giggles, inadequate safety equipment, and a pipe-based assault on complex machinery would end in painful (possibly hilarious) injuries — but this fail-army-clip-gone-right is actually the centerpiece of the Museum of Food and Drink’s exhibit on how industrial cereal puffing guns were used in the early 20th century. So, those aren’t just idiots who are risking getting maimed with puffed wheat shrapnel for our entertainment. They are idiots who are risking getting maimed with puffed wheat shrapnel for our education.
But it won’t just be puffed wheat getting the critical spotlight at the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD). When the MOFAD lab officially opens on October 28 in Brooklyn (author’s note: as if it would be anywhere else), visitors will be able learn about the science and history of artificial flavors in the museum’s first exhibit Flavor: Making It and Faking It. The lab is the first stage of a planned expansion into a larger location in 2019, and will continue to stage exhibits that critically examine food. According to Peter Kim, MOFAD’s executive director: (Via NPR)
“We want to engage the senses, especially taste and smell…When you leave [MOFAD] and go to the grocery store, we want you to see that there’s a story, economy, science behind a food like cereal.”
Being that the museum will not accept donations from “big food” to avoid corporate influence on their exhibits, MOFAD had to raise funds with one of the most non-blanket-fort-based Kickstarter campaigns in recent memory (along with a sizable donation from Infiniti).
With pledges for continued funding in the pipeline and an advisory panel that includes food science writer Harold McGee and celebrity chef Mario “waaaaaay into orange Crocs” Batali, the future of the MOFAD looks bright. In the coming months, the museum will feature a “Four Course Exploration of Sight” (and presumably taste) with chef Michael Taus, further spirited debates about the future of food, and this very polite woman trying not to look disgusted after eating Vegemite for the first time.
For more information about MOFAD, and to reserve tickets, click here.
