Seasick

This is an excerpt from an article I read in Popular Science. The series of articles this month is about "The Science of Cooking" and discusses how chefs are using technology to create new flavor options and etc.

**These days, servers at particularly innovative restaurants ask questions such as, "With those clams, would you like the seaside?" At the Fat Duck outside London, the chef Heston Blumenthal has concocted a multi-sensory experience he calls "Sound of the Sea." He presents a glass plate suspended above a bed of real sand. On the plate is a layer of sand-like particles, what looks like the foamy residue of a wave and, in between, clams and other seafood morsels. The particles and foam are edible and tasty.
But before you're given the plate, you get an iPod playing seashore sounds through the earbuds. On one special occasion, the chef brought out a fan whose blades were painted with an ocean fragrance to blow a gentle breeze on the diners. This is a fish course like no other - meant to satisfy, sure, but also to transport you to another place.**

I have to admit that my first reaction to this is disgust, for two reasons. One, I don't like seafood, but secondly, because that is not the purpose of food. Food was created so that we could sustain our lives, not so that we could entertain ourselves and spend incredible amounts of money on totally ridiculous things. I can only imagine the reaction of someone who has too little food, or no food, to an article like this. Someone told me one time (my mother, I think) that as we reach different socio-economic platforms, we respond differently to food. In poverty (ie the Great Depression) we ask, "Are you full? Did you get enough to eat?" In the middle class, where money is not as much of a problem, we ask, "Did it taste good?" When we have too much money, we ask, "How did it look?" This article really seems to verify her statements.