Donald Burns argues that doctors and chefs are miseducated about dietary science and the senses, despite their expertise. He claims higher education increases detachment from sensory reality, while blue-collar chefs stay attuned to taste, touch, smell, and sound. Burns sees the kitchen as a place where right-brain and left-brain integration can produce artistic breakthroughs, and argues authentic cooking should resist scaling and standardization.
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I studied this physiology of the senses with Gordon Sheppard at Yale, who his entire adult career was considered the number one mind on this subject in the world. To understand how your own senses work.
Right.
Like think about this. If I was to. If you were to ask me, Donald, who are the two professional groups, the most miseducated on dietary science? Doctors and chefs.
Exactly.
And who are the two groups that most misunderstand how the sense organs work? Doctors or chefs. And part of the reason for that is insanity grows as you get more educated.
That's true.
Because the base of zero. Zero.
Yeah.
You know what I find is typically the more blue collar in a certain regard, the less detached from reality. There's almost as many exceptions as rules here, but it's a strong enough correlation to make the statement. And chefs in particular, you know, a plumber's working with. With. With feel. Not that much sound. Not that much, you know, but chefs, restaurateurs, were working with the entire sensorium, all of the senses, all of the time.
It's kind of. It's what. What I think you describe it as like cooking into being.
And that's the thing when you know you have attunements.
Yes.
That you're living authentically. Right. Brain. Here's the important thing to understand. As McGilchrist said, the brain is not balanced when they're equal. Right and left. The right must be in charge. The left must serve the right hemisphere in order for the brain to be in balance. Only happened three times in human history. Recorded one, ancient Greece, Pericles. The great explosion of art, literature, philosophy, science, Aristotle. The next one was the real ancient Roman civilization. Virgil, Plutarch, all of that classical literature. And then the third time was the Renaissance.
Yes.
Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, etc. Etc. Etc. The great explosion of what happens when the right brain and left brain are working correctly together. Okay. This is what you can achieve in a restaurant. And almost nowhere else left.
I don't think there's anywhere left.
Almost nowhere left. If. If you can resist commodification, scaling and all of that, if you can say I'm satisfied with one kitchen where we are going to cook our hearts out. Like a Dominique Cran. Right?
Yeah.
Like a Grant Atchits, like a Thomas. You know, maybe two, maybe three restaurants. But it's going to be. It's never going to be mass production. Standardized, ever.
Yeah, it's never going to be mass production. Never going to be a chain, a flood of 100 locations.
Never going to commoditize. The day I see you not talking to your tomatoes is the day you're fired.
