THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER25, 2019 43
sells, it’s probably not best for babies. If it’s best for babies, it probably won’t sell.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY HORACIO SALINASI
n a laboratory in Denver, on a de-
commissioned U.S. Army base, a
baby sits in a high chair with two
electrodes attached to his chest. To his
left, on a small table, a muffin tin holds
four numbered cups, each filled with a
green substance. On the walls and the
ceiling, four cameras and an omnidi-
rectional microphone record the baby’s
every burble and squawk, then trans-
mit them to a secure server in an adja-
cent room. What looks like a window
with blinds, across the room from the
baby, is in fact a two-way mirror with
a researcher behind it, scribbling notes.
The baby’s mother takes a spoonful of
the first sample and lifts it to the ba-
by’s mouth, and the experiment begins.
Building 500, as this facility was for-
merly known, has the looming hulk of
an Egyptian temple: it was once the
largest man-made structure in Colorado.
When it opened, in 1941, four days be-
fore the attack on Pearl Harbor, threats
to American safety were much on the
government’s mind. (After the war, Pres-
ident Eisenhower spent seven weeks
on the eighth floor, recuperating from
a heart attack.) The Good Tastes Study,
as the baby experiment is called, is in a
similar spirit. The two electrodes on the
baby’s chest will monitor his heart rate
and how it fluctuates with his breath-
ing. A third electrode, on the sole of
the baby’s foot, will measure his “gal-
vanic skin response,” or how much he’s
sweating. Together, they’ll indicate
whether the green substance is trigger-
ing a fight-or-flight response. Does the
baby sense danger?
The enemy in question is kale. The
four cups are all filled with raw kale
leaves whipped into a smooth purée, or
slurry, as food researchers call it. One
sample is plain, another sweet, another
sweeter still, and the last one salted.
Sugar and salt can mask the bitterness
in kale, but this baby isn’t fooled. No
matter which sample he’s offered, he
grimaces and turns his head, purses his
lips, and swats the spoon away. The
more his mother tries, the grumpier he
gets, till he kicks his foot so hard that
he jostles the electrode, disrupting the
signal. “It’s just a thing that happens,”
Susan Johnson, the director of the study
and a professor of pediatrics at the Uni-
versity of Colorado, told me. “Com-
pletely throws off the galvanic skinANNALS OF GASTRONOMY
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