摘要：The term ‘gastrophysics’ has been proposed to describe an emerging scientific discipline that employs an arsenal of the most powerful theoretical, simulational, and experimental techniques from the physical sciences to study the empirical world of cooking and gastronomy. In the same way that biology has inspired the field of biophysics, gastronomy is the source of inspiration for gastrophysics. In particular, gastrophysics aims at exploiting recent advances in the physical sciences to forward the scientific study of food, the raw materials used, the effects of processing food, and quantitative aspects of the physical basis for food quality, flavor, appreciation, and absorption in the human body. In this study, we focused on questions pertaining to the texture and flavor of a particular type of raw material, namely, the red seaweed, dulse (Palmaria palmata), and demonstrate how a combination of physical chemistry, biophotonics, and atomic-scale molecular simulation might shed some light on these questions, particularly in relation to the physical mechanism of the umami sensation.
