Science
Q&A: Noma chef René Redzepi wants to make insects delicious. In 'Omnivore,' he explains why
Earning three Michelin stars and having your restaurant named the best in the world five times might be enough for most chefs, but René Redzepi has set his sights on something bigger: changing the way we eat.
The fare we take for granted today is at risk on multiple fronts. Climate change threatens all kinds of crops, including the most popular food in the world. Mass production by agribusinesses is marring the environment, while monoculture farming practices are giving deadly pathogens a biological edge. Underlying all these challenges is the persistent pressure to feed an ever-growing global population.
None of this was on Redzepi’s mind when he followed his best friend to culinary school at age 15. He quickly found his purpose, cooking in multiple Michelin-starred restaurants before opening Noma in his native Copenhagen 2003.
In the 21 years since, one thing has become abundantly clear.
“There’s something happening with our environment,” Redzepi said, “and how we produce and grow our food has a huge impact.”
Matt Goulding, left, and René Redzepi created “Omnivore,” a documentary series on Apple TV+.
(Courtesy of Apple TV+)
That’s the starting point for “Omnivore,” which debuts on AppleTV+ on Friday. Created with his “old pal” Matt Goulding, a food writer and three-time James Beard Award winner, the documentary series raises big questions about the future of food by going deep on eight ingredients: chiles, bluefin tuna, salt, bananas, pork, rice, coffee and corn.
Redzepi and Goulding spoke with The Times about their new show and what they learned about sustainability while making it.
How did “Omnivore” come about?
René Redzepi: Noma was exploding, and I was being offered all sorts of opportunities. I never had the desire to be on TV unless we were informing the world about how magical and important and delicious food is in a way that would be more like “Planet Earth” than a cooking show or travel show.
It was always on the back burner. Then COVID happens.
Matt Goulding: When René called, it all fell into place. His voice always had that kind of David Attenborough echo to it.
Of course we want to make food delicious and enjoyable, but we also want to understand what it means — not just political or cultural but also the natural world, the biological. All of those elements felt like they could be connected through the vessel of the ingredient.
How did you pick the ingredients?
MG: We thought about this like a recipe. What are some of the fundamental ingredients you would put at the heart of a recipe — the protein or the carb — and what are the seasonings? That’s why we have an episode on chile peppers. They don’t have an essential role in our survival, but they have an essential role in explaining the human psyche.
RR: For me, we need wheat to stay alive, but we need chile to feel alive.
You highlight traditional milpa farmers in the Yucatan and organic rice growers in India. If techniques like theirs were widely adopted, would we be able to feed everyone?
RR: We need large-scale agriculture to be inspired by traditional ways that have been used for thousands of years. At the same time, you need those ancient ways to adopt some technology that can actually help things move forward.
MG: It’s a question at the heart of the series, and the episode on corn is where we address this most directly. It’s built around the idea of a tale of two corns. One is a giant monoculture Iowa farm, and the other is the milpa, this polyculture system that was the way corn was grown during its rise in Mesoamerica.
What attracted us to the milpa was not just this romantic ideal of ancient wisdom. When you look at studies, you’ll find that polycultures can produce more calories per acre than a monoculture can.
Monocultures work on a one-dimensional plane — they just use surface area. With polyculture, you’re using using a three-dimensional space to create more food. There’s the crawling vines of the beans, the cover crop of the squash grown below, and the shade being produced by the cornstalks.
The peril of climate change is seen most acutely in the episode about rice. Farmers are so dependent on monsoons, and they’re not behaving as they were in the past.
MG: This single ingredient represents about 20% of the human diet. Figuring out how to continue to grow rice amid this incredible change in our climate is one of the most confounding problems of the 21st century.
Organic farmer Jayakrishnan Thazhathuveetil sows Kuruva rice seeds in Kerala, India, in the documentary series “Omnivore” on Apple TV +.
(Courtesy of Apple TV+)
We found JK, a southern Indian rice farmer who was just trying to grow rice for his community. He discovered that all these incredible varieties of rice that he grew up with were disappearing, so he took it upon himself to look for them. Maybe one of them will adapt better to the changing climate.
RR: Perhaps if we ate more different things, that would also be something that could help. Could we eat more seaweed? Could we eat more mushrooms? Could we eat more legumes? What about bugs? These things have the potential to be mini-staples.
Could we eat more seaweed? Could we eat more mushrooms? Could we eat more legumes? What about bugs?
— René Redzepi, founder and head chef of Noma
Throughout the series, you show how much humans have literally changed the landscape in pursuit of a good bite to eat. Is this necessarily bad?
MG: Food has always been at the sharp end of the globalization spear. It’s been driving a globalized world since the Age of Discovery, looking for spices, trading salts along the Silk Road.
Master sushi chef Takashi Saito prepares bluefin tuna at his Tokyo restaurant in a scene from the documentary series “Omnivore” on Apple TV+.
(Apple TV+)
Bluefin tuna is a very potent example. What had been a trash fish for the better part of the 20th century could suddenly transform into one of the most sought-after ingredients through the innovation of this one individual at Japan Airlines.
Is this necessarily bad? I don’t think it has to be. There are good ways to do it and there are bad ways to do it. It’s a tough thing to draw a line in the sand.
You seem to have a love/hate relationship with global markets. They make it possible for premium coffee growers in Rwanda to be paid fairly for their labor-intensive work, but they also allow the United Fruit Company to take over big chunks of Latin America to grow bananas.
MG: The United Fruit Company is the classic example of a system that controls all means of production so you can maximize efficiency and profit and get a product around the world. The only thing they didn’t factor in is that you can’t control nature in the long run. This is what we’re seeing with Panama disease and bananas.
That a banana costs one-fifth of the cost of an apple grown right down the road from you is one of the most confounding things about our food system. But the true cost of that banana — to the workforce, the consumer, and the planet — is definitely much greater.
RR: If we can just make people aware that this is how food works, and make you think about what sort of systems you tap into, that will be powerful. Most people probably have no clue.
MG: When we eat, when we drink, we are voting for some world we want to live in. It’s an incredibly empowering thing to be able to do three times a day.
Did you learn anything while making “Omnivore” that changed the way you do things at Noma?
RR: When we go into Noma 3.0 next year, we will cease to operate as a 12-months-of-the-year restaurant and focus a lot of our attention and skills and team on tackling bigger questions in the food space. One of the projects I’m looking into is this thing that we call Future Staples of Food, which was inspired by a lot of the research we’ve done. I mentioned some of them before — the seaweeds, the mushrooms, legumes, and so on.
What about insects?
RR: For sure. It’s definitely a superfood. It’s unbelievable the amount of calories and nutrition you get. It’s mind-blowing.
But to change habits and have more things in our diet, we need to make them utterly delicious so that people choose them. Deliciousness is the change factor.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Our universe might be chock-full of cosmic wonder, but you can observe only a fraction of astronomical phenomena with the naked eye. Meteor showers, natural fireworks that streak brightly across the night sky, are one of them.
The latest observable meteor shower will be the Lyrids, which has been active since April 14 and is forecast to continue through April 30. The shower reaches its peak April 21 to 22, or Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
According to NASA, the Lyrids are one of the oldest known meteor showers, and have been enjoyed by stargazers for nearly 3,000 years. Their bright, speedy streaks are caused by the dusty debris from a comet named Thatcher. They appear to spring from the constellation Lyra, which right now can be seen in the eastern sky at night in the Northern Hemisphere.
The moon will be about 27 percent full tonight, appearing as a thick crescent in the sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
To get a hint at when to best watch for the Lyrids, you can use this tool, which relies on data from the Global Meteor Network. It shows fireball activity levels in real time.
And while you gaze at the heavens, keep an eye out for other stray meteors streaking across the night sky. Skywatchers are reporting that the amount of fireballs is double what is usually seen by this point in the year.
Where meteor showers come from
There is a chance you might see a meteor on any given night, but you are most likely to catch one during a shower. Meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through the rubble trailing a comet or asteroid as it swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteor showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks. But there is only a small window when each shower is at its peak, which happens when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris. The peak is the best time to look for a shower. From our point of view on Earth, the meteors will appear to come from the same point in the sky.
The Perseid meteor shower, for example, peaks in mid-August from the constellation Perseus. The Geminids, which occur every December, radiate from the constellation Gemini.
How to watch a meteor shower
Michelle Nichols, the director of public observing at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, recommends forgoing the use of telescopes or binoculars while watching a meteor shower.
“You just need your eyes and, ideally, a dark sky,” she said.
That’s because meteors can shoot across large swaths of the sky, so observing equipment can limit your field of view.
Some showers are strong enough to produce up to 100 streaks an hour, according to the American Meteor Society, though you probably won’t see that many.
“Almost everybody is under a light-polluted sky,” Ms. Nichols said. “You may think you’re under a dark sky, but in reality, even in a small town, you can have bright lights nearby.”
Planetariums, local astronomy clubs or even maps like this one can help you figure out where to go to escape excessive light. The best conditions for catching a meteor shower are a clear sky with no moon or cloud cover, sometime between midnight and sunrise. (Moonlight affects visibility in the same way as light pollution, washing out fainter sources of light in the sky.) Make sure to give your eyes at least 30 minutes to adjust to seeing in the dark.
Ms. Nichols also recommends wearing layers, even during the summer. “You’re going to be sitting there for quite a while, watching,” she said. “It’s going to get chilly, even in August.”
Bring a cup of cocoa or tea for even more warmth. Then lie back, scan the sky and enjoy the show.
Where weather is least likely to affect your view
Storm systems sweep across the country in early spring, and some will be obscuring skies tonight. But there will still be plenty of areas with clear skies, particularly in parts of the central United States.
“The best spot is going to be in the Upper Midwest,” said Rich Bann, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa will offer especially good sky-viewing weather and a beach on the Great Lakes could be a nice spot to look up at the stars.
But don’t expect to view the show from Chicago, as Illinois could see some thunderstorms. The weather will be better in the Northern and Central Plains, particularly the eastern Dakotas.
High, wispy clouds are expected over the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and into parts of the Mid-Atlantic. But, Mr. Bann said, “you may be able to see some shooting stars through thin clouds.”
Clouds will be draped across much of the Southeast and the Northeast, though there could be some clearing in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Remember, the meteors could be visible all night long. If you look outside and see clouds, try again later.
Catching the spectacle will be challenging across much of the West, particularly from Washington into Northern California, where a storm system is bringing rain and snow. That system will move east overnight.
There are likely to be some pockets of clear skies at times across southern Nevada, northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, Mr. Bann said.
Amy Graff contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON — Amid growing national security concerns, the FBI said Tuesday that it has launched a broad investigation in the deaths or disappearances of at least 10 scientists and staff connected to highly sensitive research, including four from the Los Angeles area.
“The FBI is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists. We are working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state and state and local law enforcement partners to find answers,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI’s announcement comes after the House Oversight Committee announced that it would investigate reports of the disappearance and deaths of the scientists, sending letters seeking information from the agencies involved in the federal inquiry as well as NASA, which owns the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, where three of the missing or dead scientists worked.
“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the committee, and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote in the letters.
President Trump told reporters last week that he had been briefed on the missing and dead scientists, which he described as “pretty serious stuff.” He said at the time that he expected answers on whether the deaths were connected “in the next week and a half.”
Michael David Hicks, who studied comets and asteroids at JPL, was the first of the scientists who disappeared or died. He died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. No cause of death was disclosed.
A year later, JPL physicist Frank Maiwald died at 61, with no cause of death disclosed.
Two other Los Angeles scientists are part of the string of deaths and disappearances.
On June 22, 2025, Monica Jacinto Reza, a materials scientist at JPL, disappeared while on a hike near Mt. Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains.
On Feb. 16, Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot on the porch of his Llano home. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department arrested Freddy Snyder, 29, in connection with the shooting. Snyder had been arrested in December on suspicion of trespassing on Grillmair’s property.
Snyder has been charged with murder.
There is no evidence at this point that the deaths and disappearances, which occurred over a span of four years, are connected.
A spokesperson for NASA, which owns JPL, said in a statement on X that the agency is “coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists.
“At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat,” agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens wrote. “The agency is committed to transparency and will provide more information as able.”
Representatives from Caltech, which manages JPL, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sun had barely risen over the Pacific Ocean when a small motorboat carrying a team of Indigenous artisans and Mexican biologists dropped anchor in a rocky cove near Bahías de Huatulco.
Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.
Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.
The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.
A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.
Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.
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