The Food and Drink Museum will open in its first permanent home – a mini-museum in Brooklyn — in October. Above, an artist’s rendering shows one potential exhibit – on ready-to-eat cereal — in MOFAD’s final space. In the foreground is an extruder, a giant machine used to cook and shape cereal. PHOTO: MOAFD

Everyone eats. People of all ages and backgrounds, from picky and apathetic eaters to gastronomes and food lovers, should care about food. Informed eaters are better eaters. They make better choices for their taste buds, health, community, and environment.Food is culture. It is more than simply what is on our plates: it is a common denominator of human relationships.Food is personal. People should be approached with a non-judgmental attitude about their diet.Food is participatory. To best learn about food, you must taste, smell, and think.Food is fun. A positive, non-fear-based outlook is the best way to approach food education.

The Museum of Food and Drink couldn’t have worded it more finely. And they are doing one better by working towards opening doors in Brooklyn come October. So hold on to all your questions about food (well the one about the chicken and the egg is still debatable), for answers may be at hand.

How did we get vanilla flavor without a vanilla bean? Or chicken flavor made from all-vegetarian ingredients?

Though humans have been enjoying the sensory pleasures of flavor since we first popped food into our mouths, the flavor industry itself is relatively new. And this modern business of manufacturing smell and taste will be the theme of the Museum of Food and Drink‘s first exhibit in a brick and mortar space of its very own: a “mini-museum” opening in Brooklyn on Oct. 28.

The small space, dubbed MOFAD Lab, will be the first permanent home for a project already years into the making. The idea for MOFAD was first conceived in 2012, says executive director Peter Kim. “There wasn’t a good precedent for what we were trying to do,” he explains.

What they’re trying to do, in essence, is create a world-class museum that combines the multisensory experience of eating with information about the history, commerce, science and culture of food. As we’ve reported, hundreds of institutions exist devoted to regional cuisines or specific foods — there are museums for chocolate, cheese, fish and Spam, for starters. But MOFAD’s vision is much grander – and interactive.

Read more here.