May/June 2008
Letters to the Editor
Flint, not Flynn
I was delighted to see the article on my wonderful former student, Katori Hall ’03, in Columbia College Today [March/ April], but surprised to see myself identified as “Professor Austin Flynn” instead of “Flint.” That said, I very much appreciated her generous comments. She is a fine writer, and it was a delight to work with her on the early stages of the play Hoodoo Love. One often calls a gifted creative writer at the college level “promising.” Katori was all of that, but with Hoodoo Love she showed that she was already a writer of considerable accomplishment. She certainly merits the attention she received from Columbia College Today.
Austin Flint
Adjunct Professor, Dept. of the Arts
New York City
Umami
I am a retired biochemist who loves food and cooking. As a food lover, I thoroughly enjoyed Jonah Lehrer ’03’s mouth-watering book chapter on Escoffier [“Columbia Forum,” March/ April]. Yet as a biochemist I feel compelled to protest that the piece evidently was not proofed by someone familiar with amino acid chemistry. Although the statements regarding the various forms of glutamate were sometimes a bit off, those errors are trivial and harmless. I do, however, object to the offhand description of meat as “nothing but amino acid.” If this were true, steak would be just as healthful for us as tofu. Alas, it is not; even when entirely freed of obvious fat, the mass of muscle cells that are the major components of meat contain cholesterol, not to mention a host of other goodies.
That bit of misinformation in Lehrer’s article could be dangerous to some individuals. That said, however, I plan to continue eating umami-rich, sizzling steaks rather than tofu.
Ezio Moscatelli ’48
Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.