 
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm Barry Smith.
I'm the director of the
Institute of Philosophy, and
I'm the founding director of
the Centre for the Study of
the Senses.
So we're here at the Royal
Institution working alongside
the Arts & Humanities Research
Council to bring people from
the sciences, the arts, the
humanities together to look at
food,
because food is one of those
things which is many, many
dimensional.
You've got an historical
object.
You have a cultural object, an
economic object, something
chemical, something
perceptual.
All of these sciences and arts
can be combined when we're
looking at food, how it's
presented, what its aesthetics
are, how we enjoy it, how it
works on us, how we grow it.
People are fascinated by food.
And so by coming together at
the Royal Institution we're
going to get people to explore
how their senses work.
So that they become a little
more aware of what's going on
in them and even more aware
of what they're eating.
Hello, good evening, and
welcome to Food,
the Brain and Us.
Food is one of those things
which we have been attending
to from birth.
We have a sense that
discriminates our engagement
with the world immediately that
we're born, giving us
liking or disliking, giving us
a way of interacting with
those things that we put in our
mouths or won't keep in
our mouths for long.
And because food has now become
a source of adventure
for us and the choice is
proliferating all over the
Western world.
And we're mixing up cultures,
flavours.
We find out not only about what
we can eat and where it
came from, but we're starting
to investigate, even more
seriously, what happens in us
when we eat, all of the things
that go on in our brain,
in our senses and the
combinations of those, to give
us the flavour experiences
that we like, we prefer, and
that drive us to select our
particular favourite
food choices.
Now, this evening is a chance
for us to do the theoretical
part of it.
We're going to look at the
science both of what comes to
us in eating but also what
happens to us when we eat.
And as well as doing the
science, we're going to remind
you there are not only
theoretical gains to be had
here, but food is also fun.
And you're going to, I hope,
experience that because after
the theoretical part
you're going to
have a practical part.
We're going to take you out and
give you a tasting menu of
experiences.
Where we'll try to demonstrate
to you some of the things that
are going on.
Now, this evening's event is
brought to us as a joint
collaboration between the Royal
Institution and the Arts
& Humanities Research Council.
And I'm Barry Smith and I'm
the lead fellow for the
Science in Culture theme
for the Arts &
Humanities Research Council.
And the reason I want to do
something here, with the Royal
Institution, is because when we
look at food we realise how
amazingly interesting it is to
so many areas of study, to so
many disciplines.
You can think of food
economically.
You can understand food in
its cultural aspect.
We are going to explore some
of the history of food and
eating, what our
ancestors ate.
How does that and how do the
cultures we live in shape what
we choose to eat?
And how does that affect how
things actually taste to us in
our mouths?
And because we're going to
use all of the different
disciplines that we can in a
very short space of time,
we're going to have a historian,
a neuroscientist,
an artist and a chef.
And that's just a tiny part of
what we could have considered
when we look at all the ways
in which food interests us.
So we're interested in what goes
on in that moment when
you pop something
in your mouth.
And most of us think,
it's very simple.
Put something in your mouth,
chew it, crunch it, swallow
it, it's gone, over very fast.
And the main thing you're
interested in is do I like it?
Do I want anymore?
Maybe I don't like it.
But liking sometimes
distracts us.
It sometimes stops
us from thinking
about the food itself.
What does it taste like?
And how do we have those
experiences of taste?
What gives rise to them?
Are they all coming
from the tongue?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
We're going to explore that.
You'll hear Charles Spence
from Oxford, from the
Crossmodal lab, talking about
all of the sensory goings-on
that might affect what we eat.
But our preferences, our initial
preferences, might be
set partly by nature.
We know that children, whether
they're infant children or
whether you've got baby rats or
baby chimps will all have
that same liking for sugar.
If you give them
a sweet sucrose
solution, lick the lips.
You give them something
bitter, blech, don't
want it, reject it.
And because most toxins are
bitter it's a good idea that
from birth you will reject
bitter flavours.
Because toxins--
not all of them, but
most of them--
going into the mouth, recognised
as bitter, you
expel them and you
protect yourself.
But how come, as adults, we
suddenly learn to drink
alcohol or coffee?
And we eat green vegetables.
How do we do that?
What's gone on?
What's developed our
sense of taste?
And how do we develop
or acquire tastes?
How does that happen?
And the tastes that we have now,
in London in particular,
when you look at the volume,
the prodigious volume of
ingredients that we have in our
supermarkets, where did we
get our appetite for just those
things and not others?
Why do we like some foods and
why do we find some foods
repelling or too difficult
or too demanding?
Is it just where we were born?
Is what we were used to?
And how did our historical
ancestors eat?
Did they taste things
just as we did?
Did their tastes work
differently given that they
were, perhaps, having a more
meagre diet or having a very
restricted diet?
And we're going to explore the
history of eating, especially
in medieval England with
Chris Woolgar.
But we're also going to look at
the way in which dining and
the whole experience of dining
has become very, very
specialised.
If you want to go out for dinner
now, yes, maybe you'll
go out and eat because
you'd rather
somebody else cooked it.
But very often, if you go to a
restaurant when you say, I
could have cooked that myself
it's an invitation to feel
rather lazy.
So we want to be amazed when
we go out and eat.
And now we see that the
standards for having an
extraordinary experience
at the dining table--
and not even always at
a dining table--
are raising the bar.
And from artists and chefs
working together and from very
experimental chefs like Ferran
Adria and Heston Blumenthal
we've learned to treat the
experience of dining in a
tasting menu as just that,
it's an experience.
Don't go to the Fat Duck
if you're hungry.
But go if you're curious.
Go and find out how your senses
work and what's having
an impact on the way you
perceive and eat your food.
And tonight we're going to have
Caroline Hobkinson, who
is an artist with chef skills
who is putting food as central
to her art and to the things
that she will demonstrate to
us and the things that she
will delight us with.
And she provides people in these
special exhibitions or
pop-up restaurants with
extraordinary experiences.
And food and the science
behind it is one of the
motivations.
Finally, we'll hear from Charles
Michel, a trained chef
trained in one of the most
prestigious chef schools in
Lyon in Paul Bocuse,
but also Colombian.
And who is very interested in
how he can bring very strict
and traditional--
rather classical training
in cuisine--
together with the range of
products and ingredients that
you might find in Colombia
and in South America.
And how can you combine those?
And can you combine
them successfully?
Or well it always be for both,
the Europeans and the South
Americans, a little bizarre?
He's going to give you lots of
experiences later which will
be quite bizarre.
Now, what we're going to do is
after the talks there'll be
time for some questions.
And then, before you leave,
we're going to give you your
tasting menu.
And your menu will be
numbered one to six.
And when you go out, I want
you to find your Royal
Institution guide.
They'll be wearing
the blue badges.
And they'll have their
tour guide hand up.
So they'll be number one or
number two, number three, and
so on, to six.
And you follow that person and
that's your route through the
tasting menu.
So we hope you'll enjoy
those experiences.
But first, let's go
back a little bit.
And let's find out about the
history of eating and the
history of eating and of
everyday eating in England and
in medieval England.
So Chris Woolgar is a professor
of history from
Southampton University who
studies the everyday and who
believes, passionately, that you
can't study the everyday
experience in history until you
study sensation and how
people perceive the world around
them, and eating being
a very big part of that.
And Chris is one of the leading
historians, food
historians, to really bring to
life what we don't know and
are now, through him, beginning
to know about food
history, Chris.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much Barry.
I wanted to start, really,
by posing a question.
Why would I want to think about
the senses in the past?
Why aren't they like my
physiology today?
I mean, surely everything
is the same.
The more I looked at this
question the more I discovered
that sensation in the past,
perception in the past, works
in very different ways.
A lot of what goes on is
culturally determined rather
than biologically determined.
Since the Enlightenment, the way
that we perceive the world
has been very much
a closed process.
If we go back further in time,
perception is much more open.
It's also a process that
is not just one way.
It's two way.
So if I, 600 years ago, were to
touch this table, not only
would I feel that it was solid,
that it was smooth, but
my moral qualities
would pass to it.
And its moral qualities
would pass to me.
Now, that is really very
significant, indeed.
The medieval period inherited
from antiquity the notion of
five senses, and you see on
the left-hand side of the
screen, the wheel of the five
senses from the Longthorpe
Tower in Peterborough, the sense
of taste is the monkey
or the ape on the bottom corner
there, just about to
put something into its mouth.
 
But one needs to understand
how this works in terms of
eating and taste.
Taste is just one of the
senses of the mouth.
It's, if you like, the incoming
sense, whereas speech
is the outgoing part
of the sense.
So for example, we conceive
that you might acquire the
characteristics of the animal
that the meats that you've
eaten has come from.
So you get strength from meat
in that sort of way.
If you're eating the Eucharist
you might acquire holiness as
well in that particular way.
But these things are
not quite as
clear cut as that sometimes.
There are lots of treatises
called lapidaries which are
about stones and the magic
and the law that's
associated with them.
Well, one of the ones we have
from Peterborough Abbey from
the 15th century tells us that
if somebody puts the stone
under their tongue they
then speak truth.
So this works in both ways.
There is a moral connotation
with this sense.
The senses are all the
gateways to the soul.
And consumption is certainly
critical in that.
We perhaps still abstain
from eating meat on
Fridays and eat fish.
The origin of that, in the
medieval period, is connected
with carnality.
Quite literally, the fleshiness
of the meat making
us lusty and gluttonous.
So people eat fish
to avoid that.
Not only on Fridays, on
Wednesdays, on Saturdays.
Actually, about half the
days of the year they
abstain from meat.
People are also trying to avoid
sensory stimulation.
And as we will see, shortly,
there is a
very rich, spicy diet.
And we have a very nice account
from the canonisation
proceedings of Thomas Cantilupe
who was bishop of
Hereford and died in 1282.
And the way that one eats
tells you about an
individual's virtue.
So he was avoiding sensory
stimulation.
So his chefs would prepare for
him the most beautiful dishes,
highly-spiced dishes.
They would come to him.
And he would mix them all up
together so that the spices
balanced each other out.
So it was rather wasted
on him, I think.
By about 1100, Western Europe
has acquired, really, from
Arab medical texts, a notion of
what senses there will be.
And they divide them.
Unlike us, we mainly think
of four tastes.
They will divide them
into eight or nine.
And you'll see that there'll be
sweet, there'll be greasy,
bitter, salty, sharp, harsh
or styptic, salty
like the sea, vinegary.
And there is also a notion
that taste is made up--
like everything in the
world is made up--
of bits of the four humours.
And that's a critical
ingredient in it.
And likewise, the substance that
goes with it is dependent
on texture.
And they talk about things
being thin, interim,
consistent.
And that's also quite
interesting.
Because when we look at medieval
cooking it's all
about grinding up food.
These are people without forks
to help them keep their meat
steady, as it were.
So it can be carved for you
and put on the plate.
But most food is ground to
a pulp in elite culture.
So that, in a way,
is the theory.
 
What really makes a difference,
though, to taste,
is cooking and consumption.
And from, really, the late 12th
century, we have sources
that tell us a great deal about
the preparation of food.
Our earliest collections of
recipes from this country come
probably from the 1180s.
All across Europe, from
the 1160s, 1170s we
have domestic accounts.
And then we also have physical
remains as well.
You've got the kitchen of the
Abbot of Glastonbury there,
built in the first part of the
14th century, huge investment.
There was another separate
kitchen for the monks and
possibly, a third for the lay
visitors, particularly those
who were just passing guests.
What this enables us to see,
particularly with the addition
of archaeological remains, is
a broader picture of what is
consumed in medieval England.
We can see, as well, that there
is a common pattern to
cooking all across Europe
from about 1100 onwards.
And it's not exactly the
same across Europe.
It's a bit like Gothic
architecture in that Gothic
architecture in Turin is
different from Gothic
architecture in Paris
or in Canterbury.
So there are variations.
But the cuisine is
characterised by
highly-spiced dishes.
And it's characterised by thin,
acidic sauces, sauces
that are typically made with
wine, with vinegar, with
verjuice and not with
fats and oils.
Another key component of
medieval diet is preserved
foodstuffs.
This is the big conundrum before
the 19th century, is
how you preserve food in
the long term, really,
throughout the year.
Around about 1100, in the period
of 1000 to 1100 we get
a very significant change
in medieval diet.
We suddenly get very large
quantities of marine fish
appearing across northern
Europe.
And it's clearly come from
far out in the Atlantic.
It's been preserved, typically
salted and wind dried.
And likewise, we find
meat is also salted.
Sometimes it's dried.
It's smoked.
So a huge investment
goes into this.
And this must have some
consequence, really, for how
food probably tastes and how
people perceive that.
So we're looking,
really, at the
practical workings of this.
Now, food is one of those
substances that if somebody
has something interesting on
their plate you want it too.
And that applies equally across
large swathes of society.
So noblemen have spicy dishes.
And the rest of the countryside
thinks,
well, what can we do?
We can't possibly afford
these spices.
They've come from halfway
across the world to this
island, far out, really, into
the North Atlantic almost.
So it's a long journey.
It's expensive.
But we can grow interesting
things in our garden plots.
So people look to grow herbs
and things that will
substitute.
We find preparations of
ready-made sauces that are
available in markets.
One can see mustard
being used.
But even then, there
are gradations.
People may not be able
to afford mustard.
And there are not-quite-real
mustards that are prepared out
of radish seeds and
sour ale as you go
down the social scale.
 
So what happens is that the
elite think, well, we need to
keep ourselves distinct.
And they will look to culinary
practises to continue to
distinguish them.
The Black Death is quite
an interesting
turning point in this.
Because the Black Death
kills people.
But it doesn't kill animals.
And it changes the ratio between
livestock in the
countryside and the
human population.
And all of a sudden, many people
can eat much more meat.
And they do.
Aristocrats, however, try
to eat less meat.
And they start looking at other
things that will change
taste and flavour for them.
And there are just a couple
of examples there.
The picture on the screen is of
a citron, not a lemon, just
to remind you that it's not only
taste that's changing.
Sometimes it's animals that have
been bred in particular
ways, they will change.
Does the meat taste the same?
But also plants as well.
We think of lemons, a slightly
different taste to the citron.
But citrus fruits come, really,
into aristocratic diet
in this country-- fresh citrus
fruits-- in the 15th century.
And they're very
highly prized.
They're also very bitter
until quite a way
into the 16th century.
For example, the oranges that
come in are the Seville
oranges rather than the ones
that have been mixed with
breeds from the species
from the Far
East, the sweeter breeds.
But Henry VIII, in the inventory
that's prepared
after his death in 1547, has
strainers for orange juice,
silver strainers.
So that's one indication
of what's going on.
Likewise with sugar, we find it
originally as a medicinal
condiment, really, in quite
small quantities.
As time goes on, more is made
in the Mediterranean, much
more comes to this country.
In the 1450s and the 1460s
Anne Stafford, Duchess of
Buckingham, quite a large
household, probably 80 or 90
people, gets through about 60
pounds of sugar in a year.
And she makes jam.
She's probably one of the
first people I've
found making jam.
But if you fast-forward
a hundred years
everything has changed.
The floodgates have opened.
There is, suddenly, a great
deal more sugar.
And these things affect, very
much, the way people think
about taste and flavour.
The more you have of something
the less you're able to
distinguish, in a way.
So going back to our listing
of flavours, one of the
interesting things are the finer
gradations that we had
in that list of eight flavours,
particularly of the
sour, the bitter,
and the salty.
And you can begin to see that
in what they're eating.
But as a concluding note, what
I would say, is that we have
to be very aware that we don't
think that something that is
salty is exactly the same in
conception as something that
they thought was salty.
The terminology doesn't
necessarily map exactly.
I can see something that's
red, for example.
And I might read a medieval
manuscript and that says
something is red.
We shouldn't assume they're
the same things.
Because I can demonstrate that
something that's red in the
medieval manuscript might range
from a yellowy-orange
through to a purple.
Now, there's no reason
why that should not
also be true of taste.
So we have quite a
complex problem.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Chris.
 
Thank you, Chris.
It also reminds me of the
18th century, as Steve
Shapin has taught us.
That's when we changed from
having an objective conception
of flavours being in the foods
to thinking it was just
subjective and in our minds.
Because everybody wanted to
taste the pineapple once
discovered.
And science had advanced
greatly.
But even scientists couldn't
tell you what a pineapple
tasted like.
So people started to believe
that maybe flavours were just
in the mind.
But nowadays, we might say,
they're in the brain.
So we're going to ask that
question by looking at the
work of Charles Spence, someone
who I collaborate
with-- and many of us do-- at
the Centre for the Study of
the Senses in the University
of London.
And Charles is now part of a
large grant project there
funded by the AHRC called
Rethinking the Senses.
And so Charles, from the
Crossmodal lab in Oxford,
would you take the story on?
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, so I do look in history
a little bit.
But only as far back as 100
years and the futurists.
But if I were to take somebody
from the street now, a man or
a woman, and ask them about
taste, the sort of things
they'd come up with would be
the four basic tastes, I
guess, sweet, sour,
salty, bitter.
If they've travelled a bit and
been to some fancy restaurants
they might come up with a fifth
taste of umami, kind of
yumminess, well known
from Asian cuisines.
The taste of Parmesan cheese and
then ripe tomatoes, say.
But beyond that, that would be
the list of all the tastes
that we know about.
But as a psychologist or as a
neurogastronomist or as a
gastrophysicist, a range of
terms for those who are
interested in knowing about
the brain and how that can
help us to understand taste and
flavour, we think maybe
there are far more
basic tastes.
Maybe there are 20 or 25.
Things like kokumi, metallic,
there may even be an electric
kind of tingling taste that
you may dare to try at the
hands of Charles Michel
a little bit later on.
Even a fatty-acid taste.
And so the psychologists and
neuroscientists and the
philosophers are struggling to
say, what makes a basic taste?
Why should we just have
four or five?
And why not throw in all these
other ones that are unfamiliar
to us in our daily lives, but
of which we might be able to
point to a specific receptor on
the tongue that codes for a
particular kind of input.
But really, I think when most
of us actually talk about
taste what we mean is flavour.
When I talk about the taste of
food and I'm thinking about
fruitiness and floral notes
and earthy and musty, and
meaty, and things like that.
But all those richer experiences
of taste come not
from our mouth, but really
from our nose.
And I think Barry will be
demonstrating some of that in
one of the exhibits outside
a little bit later on.
And quite how much of flavour,
what we commonly call the
taste of food, comes from our
nose is a topic of intense
discussion between me and
some of my colleagues.
But you will find some people
out there who will say that as
much as 80 to 95% percent of
what you think of as the taste
of food is really coming
from your nose,
not from your mouth.
And that's part of the reason
when people who come to the
lab in Oxford with a complaint
it's nearly always the
complaint that I've lost
my sense of taste.
What can you do?
I can do nothing.
I'm a gastrophysicist.
But what they've really lost
is not their taste.
I can show that their taste buds
are working fine, sweet,
sour, salty, bitter,
all perfect.
What they've lost is the fruity,
the floral, the meaty,
the earthy notes.
And their nose is blocked.
But they're referring, the stuff
that's coded by their
nose, all those rich flavour
terms, and mislocalising them
into their mouth--
which is an illusion called
oral referral--
and to try and understand
why that happens.
Again, you might want to look in
the brain of the subject or
the participant or the diner,
in fact, in some of our more
real-world experiments.
And so those are two of the
key senses involved in the
taste of food and the flavour.
I think a third one, that we
don't think about much-- and
which, again, will be a topic
for exploration outside a
little bit later--
is touch or oral
somatosensation.
This is things like the
temperature of a drink, the
fact that cold Coke will
taste quite pleasant.
But warm it up, change the
temperature, and suddenly, it
tastes too sweet.
So the temperature, tactile
qualities affecting the taste.
This is also what's going on in
this dish you can see here,
the bacon & egg ice cream
from the Fat Duck
restaurant in Bray.
And if you take a spoon from
that bacon & egg ice cream by
itself it's pretty OK.
You wouldn't go out and
buy some from Tescos.
But when it's served in the
restaurant it works.
And why does it work?
It works because next to the
ice cream on the left is a
cube of flavourless crispy-fried
bread.
And what that brings to the
flavour equation or the
flavour experience is texture.
So when you take a mouthful of
the crispy bread with the
bacon & egg ice cream, what
happens in your brain is those
flavours ventriloquise
and pull apart.
And you experience the bacon
flavour in the texturally
appropriate crispy bread.
And you leave the eggy flavour
behind in the ice cream.
So you get a separation of
flavours in your mouth that's
all done by your brain,
combining, saying, what's the
most likely to be
my mouth now?
And where should that bacon
flavour really belong?
And it's using the
cue of texture or
touch to give the answer.
That's three senses involved
in flavour experiences.
The fourth one, I think, that's
very important, is what
we see, the eye.
And that can be the colour of
foods or drinks themselves.
And I'm going to try and play
some tricks on you downstairs
a little later on.
But it could also be the colour
of the plateware.
And those two plates you see in
front of you have no taste.
They have no flavour.
And yet, if you were to eat the
dessert from one of those
two plates, a strawberry
mousse--
this served in Farran Adria's
test kitchens in Spain--
and those who ate the dessert
off the black plate did rate
it as 10% less sweet and 15%
less flavorful strawberry
mousse than the dessert
on the right.
Everyone's eating the same food,
but the colour of the
plate is changing the taste that
we ascribe to that dish.
And of course, the potential
health implications there, if
I know that food will taste
sweeter off a round plate and
off a white plate could
be huge and
important in terms of obesity.
We start these things
in the lab.
Either in the lab in Oxford,
which is very scientific, an
unreal world.
Or sometimes in test kitchens at
restaurants which are a bit
closer to real-world dining
but still not quite there.
But when we find something we
think that works, we then go
somewhere like the Paul Bocuse,
where Charles Michel
was trained.
And there they have an
experimental restaurant
where people go.
They book, they pay,
they have a nice
dinner with their friends.
They get a discount.
And for that discount we
ask them to fill in a
questionnaire after
their meal.
And there you can see, two of
the actual desserts created by
people like Charles Michel in
the restaurant setting.
And there too, we've been able
to show with real diners
paying for their real dinner
that plate colour matters and
changes the taste.
So when we think about taste and
flavour we think about not
only the tongue but also the
nose, the texture, the
temperature in the mouth,
but also, what the eye
is telling the brain.
And if that's true, if
vision can dominate--
and again, there's a whole
neuroscience literature about
why what we see might dominate
the other senses--
then how can we use that
in a practical way?
And how might we use
that in the future?
Well, here's Katsunori Okajima
from Japan and a pair of
virtual-reality spectacles you
can buy online for about
$1,000 and watch the movies in
its hyper-realistic form.
And above are two
plates of sushi.
Well, really just one
plate of sushi.
The plate on the left is
some kind of cheap
bit of fish, perhaps.
The one on the right is
what you might think
you're going to eat.
So people come to the
restaurant, to the future.
They put on these spectacles.
The fish has been fished dry, as
it were, of the expensive,
the really nice sushi.
So what's a person to do?
Well, maybe they don a pair of
these headsets and then go to
the restaurant, try the sushi.
And if we have the video,
please, you'll see somebody
having a dish of
virtual sushi.
The plate on the left
is the actual sushi.
And as they put their hand over
the sushi, you can see
the sushi on the right changes
its texture, changes its
visual appearance.
And then you can just put
your hand over, no, I
don't like that fish.
No, not that one.
Keep going until you find the
fish that you want, put it in
your mouth.
And it's got all the right
textural, the lighting cues.
And the question is, how
will diners respond?
Will it really seem like
they're eating
the sushi they see?
Is visual dominance
that powerful?
And if it is, can we use
it to help preserve
some of the fish stocks?
And finally, the forgotten
flavour sense is hearing.
One that now, people like Heston
Blumenthal would say, I
think of hearing and sound as
one of the ingredients the
chef can use in the kitchen.
Never before did they
think that.
And why did they start
starting to
think about sound more?
It's fully to do with the
sonic-crisp experiment that
you all-- at least some number
of you-- can try.
We have boxes and boxes of
Pringles out there, waiting
for you to try the
sonic crunch.
And we're going to show you how,
by playing with what you
hear when you bite into a
Pringle, we can make that
ultra crispy, crunchy,
fresh-as-ever Pringle.
And we do that by knowing about
how the brain works, by
knowing how if you change
what you hear you can
change what you taste.
And this is the kind of research
that starts out with
food companies who are very
interested in trying to make
healthier foods.
Or at least, foods that
are no less healthy.
But as they reduce salt, sugar,
fat and the unhealthy
ingredients.
If you reduce those things
people say, what have you done
to my brand?
I don't like it anymore.
But if you can use some of these
illusions or tricks of
the mind to preserve the flavour
by sound then that
could be of interest.
So we have all the senses, I
think, playing, combining
together into what we think
of as taste or flavour
experiences.
And the neurogastronomy tells
us about the brain science
which allows us to predict
what would happen if we
changed the sound, the
colour of the food.
And what we're trying to do at
the moment is work with chefs
and artists like Caroline and
Charles Michel here in order
to put some of that science into
forms that are appealing,
that people really
want to taste.
So here's one of them.
The Sound of the Sea seafood
dish from Heston Blumenthal's
Fat Duck, the signature
dish on the menu.
When you go to the restaurant,
outskirts of Slough, not a
very nice bit of the country.
How do you capture
that seaside?
The provencal rose moment, well,
the waiter will come to
the table with a plate
of seafood that
looks like the sea.
Maybe doing the visual dominance
with the foam and
there's seaweed and hopefully
some seafood.
On the other hand, comes a conch
shell out of which comes
some little iPod headphones.
The waiter says, probably with
a French accent, we recommend
that you put the headphones
before you start the dish.
When you put the headphones
in what do you hear?
The sounds of the sea with just
the right number of waves
crashing on the beach, just the
right number of seagulls
floating around overhead.
And when you see people in the
restaurant they were chatting,
chatting, chatting, talking
to each other, distracted.
They put the headphones
in and they're silent.
Their attention is squarely
on the food.
And if you attend to the
food it tastes better.
Just for one course, you
wouldn't want to do it for
five hours.
It'd be kind of boring.
But for one course, to
illustrate the power of sound,
I think that's a great thing.
But one where the chef
is bringing the
technology to you.
The same here, Denis Martin in
Vevey, in Switzerland, two
Michelin stars.
He makes modernist cuisine
with smoke and foam and
mirrors and espumas and
all that stuff.
And here is his take
on the gin and
tonic, the Gin & Sonic.
Take a gin and tonic,
put it in a balloon,
blow the balloon up.
Put the balloon in a bath of
liquid nitrogen, roll the
balloon around, peel
off the balloon.
What you're left with this is
perfect white sphere glowing
with illumination.
Perfect gin and tonic as you've
never seen it before.
But there's one thing missing.
Sshhhh!
The fizz of the bubbles
are not there.
So what can we do to bring
back the sound that the
modernist cuisine has taken
out through artful
presentation?
Well, put one of those little
loudspeakers onto the plate.
And the sound of the fizz will
actually come with this dish.
But it will come from the dish
rather than from the food
placed on it.
Again, the chef bringing
the technology to you.
But all of you, probably, have
a mobile phone in your pocket
or an iPod or an iPad or
a Samsung or one of
those sorts of things.
When you're at a restaurant
you can see people just
playing away, Instagramming,
taking pictures, being
distracted from the food.
Remember, if you pay attention
to the food
it will taste better.
And we think there's so much
potential there, with the
technology at the table.
Why can't we take our
iPods and maybe
serve dinner from them?
We don't think of technology
in that way.
But they make waterproof
ones nowadays.
You can stick them, I guess,
in the dishwasher.
And what could you do if you
could synchronise the
sensations you received while
eating, technology in the
hands of the diners.
We could change the colour of
the plate just like that, to
whatever we wanted.
We could synchronise music with
the food, all exciting
possibilities.
And finally, when we think about
flavour and taste, with
a neruogastronomist,
gastrophysicist hat on, we
think about all the senses
coming together.
We think about the plateware,
the cutlery.
But we also think about the
environment in which you eat.
Wherever you eat, wherever you
drink, it's somewhere.
That somewhere that sends out
signals to your brain about
sounds and smells and
temperature and textures and
feels and so on.
And those sensory cues in
the background from the
environment, we think, are
integrated into your
experience of food.
That's why food tastes so much
better in the Mediterranean on
your summer holiday.
That's why, when you bring
those bottles of wine and
cheese back home and open them
on a cold winter's night with
your friends it's just
not the same.
Something's missed
the experience.
And what's missing is
the atmosphere.
And if you know that part of the
taste of food comes from
the atmosphere you can then play
with that, be it with the
sounds of the sea or be with a
Sensorium-- an event we ran in
Soho back in March--
where people went room to room
with a glass of whiskey and a
scorecard in the other hand.
And we changed the sounds.
We changed the lighting.
We changed the texture,
the smells.
And people could see, as they
went from room to room, that
the taste of the drink in
their glass changed
by as much as 20%.
The glass was always
in their hand.
But they could see, from their
the scorecards, they were
giving the same drink a
different taste, hence
demonstrating, we think, the
importance of the atmosphere
as part of what contemporary
people think of as
the taste of food.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Charles, thanks very much,
wonderful demonstration of all
the factors that will go into
a flavour experience.
And Charles and his colleagues
from the Crossmodal Lab and
Ophelia Deroy from the Centre
for the Study of the Senses
are going to be with you to try
and get you to experiment
and discover some of
this for yourself.
Now, we said it was fun.
And we said it was serious.
And I think when we want to
understand how it can be both
at once and genuinely
extraordinary then we turned
to art and artists.
And that's why we are delighted
to have Caroline
Hobkinson to take us now from
the toolbox to the arts,
Caroline, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Hi I'm Caroline Hobkinson.
And I'm obsessed with eating in
any form, especially eating
as an experience.
I'm trained as an artist.
And that's why I say
I'm an artist.
But I work as well as a chef
in all different ways.
 
I really think that the way we
eat is such an ingrained part
of our culture that we hardly
ever think about it.
It's just taken for granted,
the way, if you just look
closely at a fork, it's just
really bizarre, or the way
just food is just stuck
in front of us.
So I'm just going to show
what I'm doing.
Because it's a bit in
that no-man's land
between food and art.
So I curate experimental
dining experiences.
Sometimes you can call me a food
artist or a concept chef.
Using performance, video
cooking, writing in all forms
I try to re-frame the everyday
rituals of eating.
I stage dining events
exploring the
world through food.
I really love to really grab
people and force them out of
their comfort zone.
It's interesting how
conservative we are when it
comes to eating.
We like new technology.
But when it comes to eating,
I'm not sure we really want
that iPad at times.
Because we actually
want our fork.
I am, personally, really annoyed
if the fork is on the
wrong side.
 
I like to do this
to other people.
So here, I built a huge table
where people were literally
sitting underneath
the ceiling.
And then with their
feet dangling.
So the exhibition itself
was peoples' legs.
And the food was brought
up by pulley systems.
So punters in the gallery
could not see
what people were eating.
And up there a jolly time was
had with the waiters popping
through the openings.
And obviously, everyone else had
a rather nice view of the
diners from below.
Another project I did is The
Secret Sensory Suppers at the
Andaz Hotel, where
they discovered a
secret Masonic temple.
And I really love the idea of
having people anonymously.
So they were led blindfolded
into the room.
And they remained masked
throughout the whole idea.
Because only when we are
masked-- and obviously
throughout the history, we
obviously know that as well--
we really come out of our
comfort zone most.
So we have individual
assistance.
We have a master of conduct.
And I was working with helium
balloons to take the idea of
touch away.
So we were literally eating
with our mouth rather than
with our hands.
So there's nothing in between
us, our hands, and our mouth.
And this is another project I
did for a salon in Milan where
I literally deconstructed the
dining table and looked at the
bizarre ways we interact
with food, especially
when it comes to design.
And there's a lot of attention
given to different things, but
never, exactly, to the meaning
of how does the fork taste?
And how does a fork influence
the taste in itself?
But people all over the world
obsess for the last 50 years
in the perfect design of the
fork, without actually being
behind where they should
be, maybe in
between the right materials.
This is another project I did
in Berlin at the Grimmuseum
which is based on La Grande
Bouffe, where I invited 20
people to commit suicide
through overeating.
And I stuck cameras in
between the food.
So you can see there, that
inside the food, people were
being filmed.
 
If anyone knows the film,
it's a lot of food.
And then the leftover were left
to rot for six weeks.
So it's very much playing with
the whole idea that one moment
we really love food.
When it comes to over
consumption it becomes
something quite different.
In this case, it's almost
like a moving,
breathing, vanitas painting.
And it's an overwhelming
amount of
smell, as well, in there.
Because sometimes, obviously,
it begins to smell.
This is something I did as a
culinary evocation of 15 Elder
Street, commissioned by the
Royal Academy, where I was
going through the eight stages
of a house and trying to
imagine the ghosts who used
to live in this place.
So this is just a little
excerpt of the menu.
Coming from Roman Spitalfields
going through Hungry
Spitalfields.
I literally served a dish of
nothing and really, telling
stories and the storytelling
power of food.
But obviously, this
all exists.
I mean, the Holy Communion was
mentioned, Thanksgiving, the
way we interact with
our wedding cake.
The actual taste of
the wedding cake,
there's not much to it.
But we all remember it as the
most amazing taste we had.
Because it actually
eaten in context.
It's how all the other
senses are involved.
It's visually, there's so
much presentations.
But insider it's just an
over-sweetened sponge.
And the fantastic feast at the
end of Eid as well, after
fasting during Ramadan.
So food is a manifestation
of our longings.
But I really believe it is
a vocabulary of our life.
Because we really remember
last Christmas.
Oh, that was when we were
in Italy and we
had this great food.
We use food as vocabulary, as
punctuation to our life.
 
My favourite food ritual
is the birthday cake.
Because for me, it is incredibly
universal.
It only appeared--
correct me if I'm wrong-- in the
last 60 years worldwide.
And the taste sensation of
eating a birthday cake is an
ordinary over-sweetened
sponge.
But the eating of it
is a masterminded
multi-sensory spectacle.
The anticipation, it has been
baked especially for us.
The light is dimmed.
Candles are lit, one symbolising
each year of our
life, another chorus of
Happy Birthday to You.
We close our eyes, make a
wish, blow out the fire.
The smell of the smoky wax,
our wish will come true.
Oh, how delicious.
Suddenly, we are four
years old again.
So we have all those
10,000 taste buds
to detect five tastes.
But our mind really creates most
of our taste sensations.
So eating is a fully immersive
experience.
And how do they interplay?
And what happens if the sense
of smell interplays with a
sense of hearing and it creates
something like no other?
So I was looking into how can we
enhance these experiences?
And then I came across
Charles Spence.
I got really excited that,
actually, there is research
done in exactly that very field
I find so fascinating,
which gives me, obviously,
most of the
motivation for my practise.
So I ended up collaborating on
a multi-sensory menu which I
served up for one month
at the House of Wolf.
This is a little excerpt
of the menu.
And it really plays with the
findings Charles mentioned
before, the fact that so much
of our taste experience is
based on our hearing, and
playing with it and showing it
to people in the way, obviously
not meaning that
people should eat forevermore
with headphones and things,
just to really draw attention
to the way we eat and to
enhance our dining experience in
the way that we assess it.
So science offers me a huge
toolbox to play with.
It's fantastic because
it is almost like
the artist's palette.
And I just grab and take it
from all different things,
from how much taste is in a
colour to touch and taste.
And there are specially-made
dining utensils where I carved
fish-fork-style endings into
tree branches to really draw
home the wild nature of eating
meat and to grow it back to
the over-modulated fork.
The one thing I find most
fascinating is sound, and how
to really modulate the
experience of food through
certain sounds.
I mean, I heard that you can
actually modulate the taste of
food from sweet to bitter by
changing certain frequencies.
I thought that was really
fascinating.
So I started to play
around with that.
So I came up with this sonic
cake pop, where I gave people
a cake pop and a lollipop
stick and
then a telephone number.
So people could ring a
certain phone number.
And then they could literally
dial a taste.
And they could decide it.
So diners were given
a number to call.
And they were prompted
to press one for
sweet, two for bitter.
And obviously, it does work.
But it's fantastic where it
could go, whether we go one
day into a coffee shop and
we can have the perfect
customised coffee,
I don't know.
It would be fantastic.
So the experience of flavour is
the integration of taste,
touch and smell.
But flavour conjures memories.
And I really am incredibly
fascinated into involuntary
memory, which obviously is known
as, as well, the Proust
phenomenon.
I won't read this out, but
obviously, most of us would
have come across Proust or the
episode of the Madeleines,
when almost just by eating and
dunking a Madeleine into warm
tea, he is completely
transported
back into his past.
He's not remembering it.
He's not thinking, oh, I'm going
to have a Madeleine like
I used to have when I
was 12 years old.
But he's dunking it.
And suddenly, it's almost
like human time travel.
He's just there.
And he's there again.
So obviously, there are
different kinds of memory.
But involuntary memory is not
just an unearthing of the
past, but a reliving of the
past as the present.
We grasp the past
as the present.
So maybe Proust was
a neuroscientist.
I mean, there are different
books on literature out there.
I doubt it very much.
But science is not the only
path to knowledge.
Where the brain is concerned,
sometimes art was their first.
So there's a French chef who
first discovered umami.
And with Cezanne and his
wonderful way of looking at
the world, obviously
this influence in
neuroscience as well.
Picasso once said, we all know
that art is not truth.
Art is a lie that makes
us realise truth.
But just imagine where we'll
go when we bridge those two
cultures together.
Because I really believe
food is us.
And that's how we remember
our travels and our
family and who we are.
And eating is the most
intimate way we
interact with our brain.
So yeah, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Wonderful.
 
Thank you Caroline.
I think that's a wonderful
illustration of just how art
and science can be not just
working side by side, but
genuinely interacting, where
each really benefits from the
contribution the other makes.
And that kind of reciprocal
working where we learn
something in the science from
Caroline's work and from the
experiments that she puts
people through.
But she's also using it to
create art and to create
experiences for people.
I should also tell you that the
Proust phenomenon is one
of the big topics of another
AHRC-funded network, the
Memory Network.
And I'm very much hoping you'll
come and join them and
talk more about Proust.
But as we talk about different
cultures as you have, we're
crossing cultures because we are
having Charles Michel, a
trained chef, who's going to
tell us a little bit about his
adventures and also tell us why
the multi-sensory means so
much to him.
Charles, welcome.
 
So Barry likes a lot to talk
about my Colombian
nationality.
I'm also French.
But I think yeah, the Colombian
side is really
powerful in me and in
my inspirations.
So let me talk to you a bit
about my background as a cook.
I studied at the Institut Paul
Bocuse, where I learned all
the basics of culinary
traditions, how with our hands
we could transform food into
delicious things to eat.
So that was for two
years in Lyon.
Then I went to dal Pescatore
in Italy, where you see, on
the far right, Nadia
Santini became my
master and my teacher.
And she used to talk about how
it was not only about what was
happening in the dish, in the
recipe and the ingredients.
It was also about transmitting
pleasure and
psychological wellness.
She wanted people
to feel happy.
She wanted to transmit joy.
So that's what I saw in people
coming to the restaurant.
And it was beautiful because
they were living this amazing
experience where they met this
family, Santini family, who
has been around since 1927,
these restaurants.
Grandmother, Bruna, in the
middle, is still doing the
risotto today.
So today, I mean today,
Wednesday.
She's probably in the kitchen.
And she won't let anyone
touch her risotto.
So it was beautiful to live
that experience and the
approach to traditions that they
had at dal Pescatore, the
wellness that they want to
transmit to their clients, the
culinary technique.
Then I went back to Colombia.
Where here, I'm on a beach.
I'm cooking on a beach with a
beautiful tradition bearer.
She taught me there.
We're cooking a lobster in some
kind of Colombian sauce
with coconut milk.
So I had this beautiful
experience of re-knowing,
re-meeting my country, my
Colombian nationality through
its flavours.
So at the same time, I was also
doing consultancy for
restaurants, teaching in cooking
schools and doing my
own events where I could also
play with all these
ingredients.
But Colombians weren't so keen
on their own ingredients.
So I found that was
quite frustrating.
Because I knew that a good dish
was about the technique
that I learned in France,
mainly, about the products and
the relationship to the quality
and the relationship
to the earth somehow,
and about passion.
But I served this dish,
for example.
And if I told the name of that
dish to my clients in Columbia
they would say, no, no,
we don't want that.
We don't want that.
That's no good.
It's Hogao, it's a
Colombian sauce,
traditional Colombian sauce.
And they would say, no,
that's no good.
Coconut milk?
No, we don't want that.
Cook us some risotto.
You know that.
You've done it.
I never did a risotto
before when I
came out of dal Pescatore.
But that's what they wanted
me to cook for them.
So they were kind of blinded.
And they wouldn't recognise
the beauty of Colombian
ingredients.
So that led me to that
salad in particular.
So I was a bit frustrated that
I couldn't cook Colombian
traditions because they wouldn't
buy it, basically.
So I got inspired by these
paintings by Kandinsky at the
MOMA Museum.
And I copied.
I transformed the aesthetic
message of
Kandinsky into a salad.
And there, Colombians
loved it.
So that it was really
interesting.
So Charles Spence was there
the first time I
prepared the salad.
Because I wanted, sorry,
it was a tasting menu.
And there was one dish
for each sense.
So that was the visual sense.
And it actually, we tested -
So now I'm here in England
doing research at the
Crossmodal Lab with
Charles Spence.
And we tested this dish in
three presentations.
One was this beautiful canvas.
The other was just mixing up the
ingredients, placing it in
the middle of the plate.
The other one was just
the ingredients
placed side by side.
And the interesting thing was
that people liked more--
intuitively recognised--
the artistic presentation.
They found it to be
more complex.
They liked it more.
And when they tried it they
rated as being more flavorful
even though it was the exact
same quantity of the same
ingredients.
So that means either, well,
first of all, that we eat with
our eyes first.
And what we see or the
expectations we have determine
our flavour perception.
And also, that somehow
we can eat art.
So I go back to this beautiful
quote by Auguste Escoffier who
actually came to London and
became famous in London more
than 100 years ago.
So he said, "Culinary art,
by the form of its
manifestations, depends on the
psychological state of
society." And I think that's
really, really important.
Because the way we eat means a
lot, says a lot about the way
we relate to our planet
somehow and
to the other humans.
So what would be the
future of food?
I think that's a question
that we have to
really focus on today.
And we have big challenges, like
being 20 billion humans
in a few decades, or
global warming.
And we know now that the way
we eat affects that.
So what's the future of food?
So I'm going to go to the next
slide, see this one.
What's the future of food?
So there's neurogastronomy,
beautiful tool that a few
scientists are going into
and the chefs are
getting inspired by that.
How do we perceive food?
So we know flavour
is a perception
and not only a sensation.
So a lot of chefs should stop
focusing on how technique or
how precise is their skill
to do the dish.
And they should think about how
we perceive it actually,
how to play with sounds
and touch and
expectations in many ways.
So for example, Caroline says
she likes the fork on one
particular side.
I don't like forks.
We have beautiful hands.
We've got a beautiful evolutive
tool that allows us
to sense what we eat.
So I think that's one
of the things.
If you have your hands cleaned
in a restaurant, for example,
and you eat with your hands
you're going to enjoy it more.
You're going to integrate
the touch in a much more
pleasurable--
and you all, I think, we could
do research here and I bet
about 90% of you would say that
they really enjoy eating
with their hands.
So that could be
neurogastronomy.
There's gastrophysics, which is
understanding the molecular
and physical properties of the
food, but also how we perceive
them and how food also affects
our physiology.
And there's also a lot of
beautiful molecules in food
that can really excite
us, like spicy and
well, we'll see soon.
There's this beautiful
grasshopper there.
I don't know if that gives you
a smile or a bit of disgust.
And I think both
neurogastronomy, gastrophysics
can help us humans
eat more insects.
Well, start eating them
in the first place.
And I think our meat-based diets
today, the way we eat on
a daily basis in Western
countries is not sustainable.
We know that.
We know that.
And we have to change.
We have to find new ways of
doing a sustainable food for
humans, basically.
So we need to find ways of
cooking that into a beautiful
shaped nugget, play with
the right expectations.
And then a beautiful sauce, and
we'll be eating nuggets
that are 50% sustainable
source of protein.
And there's Biotech,
So GM foods, where
it's the devil today.
But I've been to a few
talks in Oxford.
And that's what's cool about
being there, meeting a lot of
people that have different
views and that know a lot
about the science underlying
those GM foods.
So I think what they say, is
that it's not a silver bullet.
It means that's not going
to save the world.
But it's definitely something
that we could use.
For example, there's
Golden Rice.
So they basically made his rice
that has vitamin A, which
is one of the causes, the
highest causes of death from
starvation is the deficit of
vitamin A. So why not?
I mean, we have to consider all
the options possible to
design the foods
of the future.
So I come back to this one.
A quote by the visionary,
Auguste Escoffier that is the
grandfather of today's
traditional cuisine.
But he was much more of a
visionary than much of the
traditional chefs
today, I think.
So he said, "As flavours are
under constant refinement,
cooking is perpetually improving
to staisfy then it
will become more scientific and
more specific." Another
beautiful quote, "Cuisine has
to be the harmony that
reflects the wonders of the
Earth." I think that basically
says we have to have a good
relationship with nature
through food.
And I think there's a lot
of answers there.
 
Well, now I'm doing things,
research, Oxford stuff, as
Caroline says, doing
multi-sensory experiences, art
events involving food to make
people change their minds
about what they eat.
So that's it, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you Charles, that was
great to have a wider
perspective on what
we're doing.
So you've seen, in these short
talks tonight, that we've been
hearing from a medieval
historian, from a
neurogastronomist,
neuroscientist and
psychologist, from a food
artist, and from a chef
researcher, myself,
as a philosopher.
And this is only a tiny number
of the people we'll need to
concentrate their work and
their ideas and their
collaboration together to
understand food and flavour.
As a philosopher I'm very
interested in this question of
subjectivity and objectivity,
whether it's chefs that make
flavours or brains that
make flavours.
But to get you to wonder about
that we're going to take you
now for the practical part.
And we've heard this very nice
reminder we had from Charles
Michel and also earlier from
Caroline, that we've got
expectation leading
up to eating.
And then, as Charles taught us,
an awful lot going on as
we're eating and an awful lot
of things influencing.
But then there's the memory of
eating, that remarkable bottle
of wine or that great meal
that you'll never forget.
You'll remember who was there,
the colour of the wallpaper,
the sounds around you,
everything will be so vivid.
So we're going to hope to
give you some memorable
experiences.
But now it's time for you to try
and to experiment and to
engage your senses with us.
So we're going to give out
tasting menus to you.
Your tasting menus now will
have a number on them.
And when you go out into the
hall look for the person who's
indicating your number.
It'll be one or two or three
or four and six.
And they will direct
you to the room.
And you will have your tasting
menu in a certain order.
We'll all be there
to talk to you.
But we've got a few
minutes while the
menus are going around.
If there were any questions, if
anybody would like to ask
anything of our speakers?
Yes?
We've got one here.
Ian, please.
I'm not sure who the
question's for.
But I was just wondering
whether the impact of--
is this on?
It should be on.
Is it on?
Whether the impact of how people
use food in the first
world as a tool for enjoyment
and going out, whether how
people perceive taste differs
to, say maybe, where people
are, where food is just a thing
to keep them alive?
 
Charles?
I think Chris, in a historical
way, touched on that.
And maybe, Chris, I could invite
you to say something
about this?
I think lots of people
enjoy food.
I think there are all sorts
of elements of social
conditioning about how you enjoy
it, whether you should
enjoy it, with whom you
should enjoy it.
It's quite hard to
hang onto that
sort of question directly.
Because there's so many possible
contexts in which
food can be consumed and which
it can be prepared.
There are, quite often, within a
society, different cuisines.
And if I was an anthropologist I
would expect to see an elite
cuisine with male chefs, if
you like, and a demotic
cuisine, perhaps run by the
women doing the cooking.
But they provide different
philosophies really, for why
and how food is eaten.
So it's quite hard to see
a division between
one world and another.
Because I suspect there are a
very great many experiences in
these different worlds.
You might also expect that when
people are hungry, when
people are very close to
starvation, that if there is
an edible and nutritious
source of food
around they'll eat it.
But there are parts of the world
where people are in that
condition and manioc is
locally available.
And they won't eat manioc.
Whereas if you go to South
America, people will have it
as a food of choice.
They'll have it and
want to eat it.
So it's very interesting that
that discrimination of what
you will find acceptable
or not still
remains even under extremes.
Caroline?
Yeah, I just wanted to say, or
add to that, that even when
you're hungry, I think
food is never just
reduced to pure nutrition.
And I went to Pakistan
into some camps.
And when people are very, very
hungry they even put more
emphasis on the eating
experience.
And then so many fantastic
literature has been written
during wartime hunger years,
where people go on about the
absence of something.
I mean, often it's a very common
tool in literature.
The absence of food, of
something is described by
describing the foods you had in
the plenty or longing, or
wishing for a certain food.
So I think because obviously,
dealing with eating
experiences where there is a lot
of foods, like oh, you're
playing with food and people
are going hungry.
How does that coincide?
But I think people always have
the right for eating
experience.
And food is so much more than
just nutrition, even when
people don't have any.
Even when people are hungry.
One last question, I think
we have time for
here, in the middle.
Different people have talked
about different conditions
under which eating
is taking place.
Has anybody done anything
objectively with
regard to the brain?
For instance, doing functional
MRI studies?
Yes.
Under all these different
sorts of eatings?
There is a lot of
study coming.
Certainly not as much as
you'd have on some
of the other senses.
And part of the problem is that,
as you may know, when
you're in an MRI scanner and you
want to do FMRI you have
to keep very still.
So it's very difficult.
If you've got them chewing
you're probably going to blur
those nice lovely pictures
where you see bits of the
brain lighting up.
There have been two studies that
I'm very interested in
where they were studying
sommeliers identifying wines.
Now, it's a very uncomfortable
experience.
You're lying on your back.
You have a tube inserted
into your mouth.
And its directing liquid.
And you're told just to let the
liquid go in and try not
to do too much swallowing.
Nonetheless, nonetheless, under
those conditions the
results are very interesting.
Because they answered the
following questions--
who do you think uses more of
their cortical regions?
Who uses more of the brain
when they're trying to
identify a wine?
The expert or the novice?
Any guesses?
 
So it's the expert who uses less
of the brain because they
know exactly what to use.
And the rest of us, maybe
trying to use everything
that's in our field.
Second question, how much of the
brain is active in either
the expert or the novice
when tasting water?
And the answer is huge amounts
in the expert.
Even when they're tasting water
they can't turn off that
capacity to evaluate
and assess.
And the final question that
some of this research
addresses is who gets
most pleasure, the
sommelier or the novice?
The novice?
It's the sommelier.
And that's why we do the
science, because the answers
are surprising.
So yes, there is
some FMRI done.
Thank you all very much.
Let's go and taste.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
 
That was absolutely amazing.
I was not expecting that.
If anybody told me I tasted
through my nose I would have
told them that they were
probably tasting through
somewhere else.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
