i the ah hello welcome to sophie co visionaries, me so if she has not sent chris to lettuce and eric to play in london red, orange. it's really turns out that enjoying the food we eat is not only a matter of taste. how does flavor find its way from the tongue to the brain? and how can it be manipulated? well, i asked joseph use of experimental chef and founder of a low tire sensory calling or a lap called kitchen theory. joseph, use it experimental shaft, founder of kitchen theory, multi sensory calendar lab. great to have you on our show today. welcome. thank you

very much for having me. it's pleasure to be here. all right, so you're calling are experiments, line the field of what you call gastro physics, right? physics of taste. and we used to think that areas of the tongue detect different tastes, but turns out it's not really the case. so how does our perception of taste words? i mean, how do i know that the bear is in my mouth? are sweet and coffee is bitter. well, flavors, corn complex construct. so we tend to think of flavors being made up of 2 main elements. one is our perception of taste as you mentioned. so everything on our tongue, so salty beta, our sweet and even something called mommy and a sense of smell. and when you put the 2 together that you get flavor. but actually from our research we found the flavor as much more of a monkey sensory and cross modal. ringback perception, so what that means is more about how all of your different senses come together. so not only how you, how things smell and how they tasted,

also how they look and feel of them and even the sound of all of these very rich smoky sensory elements as weigh, eating and enjoying foods. all coming together in our mind to construct the expectations for management, the enjoyment, the dislike of the fruits that worried and so flavors of much broader topic than just looking taste essentially. so with pace like we have sweet, sour, salty, bitter right. when i, let's say strawberry ice cream, if it were completely up to me and only take sweetness, yet i take a lot more than that. where does more come from? the aroma will pay a large role in that. so we all know if you, if you're not feeling well or if you have a cold that maybe you said the cell doesn't work so well. and when, so it's a cell isn't working with eating foods. we can say the 3 doesn't have much flavor.

the taste of much you can keep adding sugar to your coffee or salt to your state and you get sweeter or sophia, but improve the flavor in any way to offensive. smith is vital for when you're eating something like you said, strawberry ice cream strawberry is made up of much more than just sweetness. there's a lot of other molecules and compounds contributing towards flavor and extinguish. let's say strawberry. ready from raspberry or. ready from blackberries, and that's a vital element of us being able to kind of really make a distinction between what strawberry ice cream and what's a rouse we ice cream if you didn't have your sense of smell or if you pick your nose as you were eating them both they probably both taste pretty much the same. they kind of sweet and maybe a bit sour in some way. but essentially we very difficult to tell the difference with something like ice cream. the other element is. ready obviously the mouse feel and the texture and the creaminess, and all of these elements. what are coming together in your brain to give you and

the temperature, let's say of the ice cream as well. so all of these things that your brain is taking into consideration when it's trying the ice cream and that it's making judgments based upon. so if you have an ice cream and it's very only see or has a crunchy, it's kind of texture where the it's kind of very frozen that might not be as pleasant as when the ice cream is nice and soft and smooth in your mouth and melts . really well, so it's not just about the sweetness of the soundness of the business. it's also about all the other factors that go on to make ice cream, so enjoyable, or if i got your idea, right, food flavor is the brain cost track rather than a sensory perception in our mouth. so are you saying basically that if i convinced myself somehow that lemons are sweet, they will taste sweet? no, because as the important thing with flavor is you've got 2 elements working, one, your chemical senses. so your center smell and taste and bees are reacting for the

chemicals in the true, it's giving you a certain perception. then you have the other elements, as i said, like things like texture or sound or the visual of it. so if you are using this for ice cream, but it was blue color, while your brain isn't going to register it as being strawberry initially. so maybe when you try it, you will disconnect. maybe if you, if you see the screen, the blue, you might, let's say for example, think it's blue break. and then when you go with it, and it turns out that it tastes a strawberry. well, then your brain would be very confused by that. and so what would be better in a situation like that is if we want you to register it as being strawberry ice cream is that we make it as red as we can, or as close to store a color as we can feel brain to be able to really kind of confirm its expectations, but no, it's not enough. you can change certain attributes in one sense. another can confuse the other sensors or can maybe direct them towards making it for me, different judgment. then you can convince your brain, but eating strawberry ice cream is

a different flavor because there's too many physical parts of it. when it comes to chemical senses, that can be food in such a simplistic way. i still wonder, like, how far can we manipulate our brain? let's say maybe i can't come in my cell, but can other people convince me? even they know in detail how flavor building works. i mean can senses which produce the experience of labor in our minds, the manipulated and create a can link convincing illusion of labor. now, yes, so there are certain things you can do. it's food that will in some way or men. so as i said, maybe changing the color of the food can change your. ready perception, we know a lot of people are using something like a green jelly if you present them with something like that's kind of like a jelly and it's a green color. a lot of the time they'll assume that the flavors like something like line or and even if you flavor with something different,

a lot of the time people find it difficult, difficult to kind of english or identify what it is because the sensory choose are quite right and you can in some ways. ready even through things like sounds make foods taste crunchy or, or fresher than they are. and when it comes to texture, you can also meant flavors so that you can kind of trick the brain slightly. but at the same time, it is very difficult to convince your product that you're eating one flavor buses. and now they're a little kind of sensory things you can do. kind of what we do with the research is looking at how you can make these little sensory changes within the food that encourage people towards making maybe more sustainable or nutritious or healthier food choices. and this is specifically looking at with like kids or hospitals or care homes, and looking at how we can design food experiences to encourage people to make better choices. quote, culinary iris, chef flavor,

chefs like you right. they approach eating not just food consumption, but it's like a multi sensory experience. and you mentioned smell. let's talk about that. when there is a big ball of soup. obviously the smell feels room. but when i, let's say i don't know a potato chris, right? i may be only smell it for a 2nd before eating it. how do i smell food that is already inside my mouth? past my nostrils, and shouldn't i lose the flavor the minute consumed? good. now you have 2 senses of flay, too sensitive smell. one is called or for nasal, which is as you said, the bowl of soup when it's in the room and everything that you can kind of smell around you india environments. and as you're lifting the student up to, you know, as you can smell, that kind of aroma of the see all of that is what you would call ortho, nasal. and then once you put the soup into your mouth or whatever the food is, then you have something called retro nasal snow, which is all the,

every time you swallow the little, go up through the back of your old factory system, which is your, what make up your sense of smell, and that gives you a 2nd perception of aroma. so this is why as well, you can smell something like many cheese that maybe doesn't fell so great, that's quite hundreds. if you think of a kind of unripe french bree or something like that, that's quite pungent and smell. but once you put it in your mouth, tastes delicious. and the flavor is great, and it doesn't smell the same inside as it does on the outside. and that's because you're chewing it, it's mixing with your saliva, and it's undergoing a processing as well. that is changing that aroma to construct in some way. so what's important to understand is that you choose a smell of very distinct work in different ways, but essentially, even when you put the food in your mouth, you are still smelling it suddenly with a. ready different, it's not necessarily directly through the notes. you know, i think it was like a decade ago,

cadbury updated their dairy milk chocolate bars. and there was like a modest opera that ensued and people were claiming that it has become sweeter and then food expert chuckle at pierre's still like way again. and then turn out that the recipe hadn't changed a bit. and they just made the edges a bit more around, which somehow made people sure that the taste had changed as well. so your, our sense of flavor is in full read the shape of the sweet meeting, by my sense of vision. yeah, i mean there's all sorts of interesting associations that we have for patients and judgments for the set through our eyes. i mean, that's extra ecology, this notion of visual dominance. so what we see with our eyes, that's judgements and expectations and a very kind of simple. ready example i could show you of that would be if i show you these 2 shapes, and if i was to ask you which of these you would call and which you would call kiki . so. and kiki,

if i say this one would be there will be key. can the other one will be blue? bam. yeah. about $0.98. well, population will go with that kind of correlation. there's no right or wrong answer for it. but what's interesting is that we found that even if you talk about food and flavors, sweet creamy, funky chewy, soft comfort food flavors, most people will associate those with food future. tar acidic, christy. crunchy sour kind of flavors will spicy favors. most people associated with something like this shape over hickey. i'm what's interesting about that is, although there is no right or wrong answer that the majority of people who have that kind of association. so when we see foods that are maybe read or are enjoy yellow, maybe we assume that they going to be on the sweet side of things that receive a rounder and soft and looking. maybe we assume again that they're going to be sweeter in some way. but if we see periods and other kind of colors or shapes, so there's all sorts of things that you can grease example that you just gave for

the chocolate. that could be 2 reasons behind the why people felt it was sweet. number one, the shape was round of the boss, or maybe that needs and melts differently on the tongue. maybe that's more surface area and maybe that's why people got a bit more sweet. and then the 2nd reason is maybe just because it looked around people soon and from the visual presentation of the chocolate that in some way it was sweet. joseph will then take a short break right now when we're back. we'll continue talking to joseph gives the experimental shad, founder of kitchen theory and multi sensory calling or lab. talking about how to taste, find its way to our brain, say with the the

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the ah, we're back with joseph uses experimental shad founder of kitchen theory and multi sensory call and they were laugh joseph then then there is correlation of color and taste. i need talk about that quite a bit as well. we generally associate white with salty, black brown with bitter greenwood like sour, red, sweet. where do these associations come from? i mean, why, for example, we associate white with salt. if sugar is also white. yeah, no i, i completely agree and there is no you know, the research,

if anything has identified that we have these associations that hasn't really specified why we have stations. and one of the reason being is that, you know, distant change from even region to region within the majority of people around the world reset will say, sorry about $0.75 was population will say, why is salty? black is green, sour, red, sweet. but. ready then when you go into different parts of the world, so when we went to sweden, for example, most people felt like was salty because they were associated with salt licorice. when we went to asia, they said in some parts they said like was salty because they were associating with things like social pistols. so there will be regional and kind of cultural differences that play into this in some way. but what's interesting is that the majority of people and put into that kind of course choice of making association between the color and the taste will kind of agree on what that is. and that could be maybe out of that choice. ready salt his white,

so we go. it's kind of white being salty, blackish brown. you think maybe it's things like tea and coffee? maybe it's been charged through that kind of like this in the student and green being sour may because of our candy or lines. there's even a hypothesis that it could be more than 8 pounds of our brain, the thinks of unripe fruits being kind of green and sour. right? fruits being sweet and, and juicy and ready to eat. so we don't know exactly why there are these correlations exist, but what we do know is that they exist. and that's very interesting because then if you come to the design of food on the sign of food experiences, understanding those kind of relations can maybe help you with designing foods or. ready food experiences, but encourage people to make better food choices. you know, will love food that also look more weird then taste like oil stirs, some thinking harm or durian. i mean that asian fruit that it smells like hell, but when you taste it's really good. so for

a certain fluids do is switch out certain sensors like visual sensor or sense of smell when it comes to enjoying them. or does it always come into package? know all the senses are constantly working away like apps and your phone in the background when you're using your sense of hearing doesn't tend to shut down. everything is constantly always taking away in the background. so it's maybe if you become more aware of it and this is a big part of what we. ready do with the dying experiences that our chefs table is encourage people to be more mindful of those sentences as a thing. so in the case of something like dorian, which you mentioned, you're right. it does smell pretty bad when you kind of, you know, when you 1st approve open the new smelling it, as we said, often easily from the outside. but once you buy into it will then the retro nasal side of things kicks in and all of sudden it becomes something that we enjoy in some way. but you know, it's important on the senses. if your sensors are functioning normally constantly

working in the background and feeding your brain with this very kind of rich information. and if you don't like the, if you don't like, how does look than chances are it's going to be very hard unless you change the way the way you manipulated way, even by trying doing something by just by changing the visual aspects of the presentation of it. even that may be enough to encourage someone to eat or enjoy it, but generally, all the sensors are constantly working. and what's most important is that they work together for people to have a really enjoyable, multi sensory food experience. being mindful, it's probably one of the most important parts of it because, you know, as we always say to people, you can eat a sandwich sitting on a, on a train between meetings, kind of rushing from one place to the other. and it's not going to taste as good as, as the same sand ridge, if you it says on a nice bench on a sunny day,

like the nice sunny day that you have behind you. that enjoying is a nature and kind of taking in the texture and the flavor and the specifics of the sandwich. so i say constantly working, but we don't always focus on what we're doing and a big part of what we do. a kitchen theory with most sensory dining is making sure that people really aware and focus on mindful of each of their senses. enjoying that meal. can there be a taste experience that is pure not enhanced by music, light shapes, colors, etc. would that taste experience be more true to others? will i know how. busy she can really take to fight without, let's say, looking at it at all. it may do. but then again, you know, if using that kind of some like dining in the dark, where you don't get to see your food. most people find that quite mobile and

interesting, but in the long term we don't really necessarily enjoy not being able to see our foods. i think we take, you have to, you only have to take a look at instagram, see how much people enjoy. cohen re, boyer is looking at food and the whole idea to put on prophy and all the content that's uploaded around to we enjoy human beings looking at food and it kind of opens up a time. it makes us one to engage with it or not one to gauge. and as for the other senses, if you have district back and you have, if you think about it in i guess the late eighty's, early ninety's, a lot of restaurants were going for much more of a kind of almost gallery style white walls. ringback white tablecloths, very stripped, right, very simplistic. and it was all. ready about the food that was on the plate and i think now it's something to once done more and more people. ready like seeing the open kitchen, people like the showmanship, they like the music to be hunger and fishing with the atmosphere and mood there.

and they like the you know, the picture of the chairs and the tables. and all of these things are important. tried trees where they were registering the mindfully on is thing, but these, this is all information that's kind of being fed back to us. and i think for us to really be able to enjoy sitting in a blank room with a blank table with a piece of chicken in front of us. it's not going to be. ready anywhere near as enjoyable as enjoying that same piece of chicken and the company of good friends and the nice environment. and that's the kind of elements that really come together to give us a dining is also very social. it's a very sensory and social activity that we enjoy taking part in as part of the community as part of a group. so i don't think dining an isolation really gives you a purer version of eating. this is why we do a lot of tests in the lab, but we also do a lot of we try and take these ideas from out of the lab and put them into the

dining room because people taking truth in a lab been very stero conditions, isn't necessarily how we taste things in the real world. and so there's a big difference between the 2. i know that like your mission in general is using your knowledge about food and as a multi sensory experience. and then by that, inspire people to eat better, to eat healthier. so i understand, for instance, that the color of a plate can make chicken breast and broccoli on it look more appealing. what are the tricks that you could use to make people less sugar or salt? well, maybe or venting. so then we talked a little bit about kind of like shape and texture. so if i was designing, let's say, a children's deserve some kind, maybe want to make sure that the packaging that it comes in is really red. reset.

red is the color of sweetness. so read some paints and oranges and colors like that, that really scream sweetness. maybe want to make sure that color of the color of the product, the youngest ice cream itself, let's say, is deep tone of red. that kind of tells the brain, but there's that sweetness there that way. craving then there's the shape of the packaging. maybe you'd want to go from the case of sweetness, you want to make it rounder in some way and more soft and kind of maybe the text or even of the material to the packaging is made of. we know that people are holding something like go big or silk or something smooth and they'll find food sweeter and creamy and smoother than if they holding something rushed in hand like some paper or piece of ross piece of elk grove. so thinking even about the sign of the packaging thing, the design of the ice cream of the, you'll get itself in terms of its texture and it's creaminess and smoothness. now, that's not to say that you can take out all the sugar from this food. all these

that and simply replace it with these other century elements. however, what we're saying is, even if you can make small reductions in the amount of sugar that you put, i was mentioning the color by changing the shape or the texture, or even what people are listening to is using it. all of these elements can combine together towards allowing us to make small reductions in things like salt and sugar across the board. and obviously be small reductions can kind of over time and build up to something called yeah, it's funny. i noticed that as i'm move through life natural becomes tastier to me. you know, like teenagers can dream gallons of coca cola, but adult people around me stick to sparkling water or flat water with lemon. and it's not just a question of cellulite or, oh, or you know, chemicals in the coke. it's just like it tastes better because it tastes simpler. does love for chemical, enhanced food, whether with age and in what other ways,

age of fact, perception of taste. it. so it's not so much like chemicals, as much as is what you just mentioned, which it is age. so when you were a baby, obviously you crave completely different nutritionally. you crave different things . and when you're teenagers, when your adult, when your elderly, you know, getting older in life and even things like picture a food will change. when you're a baby you, you simply won't solid foods. and on the opposite end of the spectrum. and then when you're a teenager, let's say you love crunchy crispy correctly even into adulthood, but then as you get older, maybe again, softer foods become more comfortable and more enjoyable again. so there's, there's both that kind of physical requirements of food that will change as we kind of grow in an age. and then there will be the nutritional requirements that we have . we can see this and you know, people who are say women who are pregnant have different nutritional requirements, or people who live in different parts of the world, different jobs,

they'll have different nutritional requirements. so it'll change very much from one individual to another. but what's for sure, is that our pallets and our what a t h and what we enjoy definitely changes over time. and one of the reasons would be because something like soda, when you mentioned there, as well as we get all that maybe we become more aware of the ramifications or the, the cost of drinking so much sugary, sweet, complicated stuff. my point is, is that as we get older and start to maybe change our priorities. so when teenager do i really care as much about, you know, my body shape and way, well maybe that's where i'm starting to become more aware of it and maybe into adequate i start realize that well, actually, to the taste of that coke as good as it is appealed to me quite as much because i have different priorities and what i find tasty now or how i classify good flavor, go tasty foods. thank you so much for this wonderful insight into the world of

food pace pallets of our taste. it's really quite honestly talking to thank you so much. once again, you emphasize that this is a whole new science and it's not just food. i wish you all the best of luck and i hope we can do this in person one. most definitely i look forward to it. thank you so much. take care. thank you. have a great day. the me that the civic leg around the world. expedition by 1000 miles round the clock and give it to the

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