MALE SPEAKER: Hello, everyone.
How are we today?
Give me a cheer.
Excellent.
I'm very pleased to welcome
Charles Spence to Talks
at Google.
Charles Spence is a professor
of experimental psychology
at Oxford University,
and a gastrophysicist,
working at the
interface between chefs,
food companies, and technology.
I've seen the slides.
They look incredible.
Please join me in
welcoming Charles
with a round of applause.
CHARLES SPENCE: OK.
So it's a pleasure to be with
you here this lunch time,
and tell you a little
bit about the research we
do in Oxford, but also with
food companies and chefs
around the world.
It's sort of this interface
of psychology, neuroscience,
technology, and
fine dining, it has
some of the insights that
are emerging from the latest
kind of research at
this kind of interface,
are starting to work their
way out to home dining,
to a variety of real
world situations,
to hopefully allow us
all to eat a little more
healthfully in the future.
And it's all kind of premised on
this idea of the perfect meal,
the title of the book.
Just feel the weight in
your hands and you'll know,
there's quality there.
And the opening quote from
the book, from MFK Fisher,
is one that kind of inspires
a lot of our thinking.
"That once at least, in
the life of every human,
whether he be brute
or trembling daffodil,
comes a moment of complete
gastronomic satisfaction.
It is, I am sure, as much a
matter of spirit as of body.
Everything is right.
Nothing jars.
There's a kind of harmony
with every sensation
and emotion melted into
one chord of well-being."
If we all think back in our
past over the last few years,
we've all had that kind of
perfect meal experience.
My colleagues sort
of think, well, we
can't study it, because it's
kind of different for each
and every one of you.
Maybe for some of you, it's
going for your gastro tourism
to some fancy Michelin
starred restaurant
on the other side of the world.
For others, it might
be nothing more complex
than a picnic on a summer's
day in the English countryside.
Different for each
and every one of us,
but I think that we can sort of
study that perfect meal, what
makes it great, try and
extract some generalizations
can be used in everyday life
to kind of nudge our meal
experiences in the
right direction
to be more stimulating,
more engaging, more
memorable, and perhaps
more healthy as well.
I'm certainly not the first to
think about the perfect meal.
It is a topic that goes
back at least a century.
You find some the first
sort of mentions from 1894
from French chemist, Berthelot,
talking about the perfect meal
and what it would be like
sometime around about today.
And for all of the chemists,
for the feminist writers,
and also for the sort
of serious scientists,
it was this, the meal in a pill.
So he was imagining in
1894, thereabouts, what
it would be like in a century.
And the idea of
sitting down to eat
and wasting an hour of your
day with a multi-course meal
seems bizarre.
Surely in the future, we'll
have a pill, we'll pop it.
And that will sustain
us through the day
and we'll need nothing else.
Just take this quote
from-- where has he gone?
"Looking Forward: A Dream
of the United States
of the Americas in 1999,"
written in 1899 by Arthur Bird.
"In order to save
time, people in 1999,
often dined on a pill, a
small pellet which contained
highly nutritious food.
They had little inclination
to stretch their legs
under a table for
an hour at a time
while masticating on
an eight course dinner.
The busy man of 1999 took a
soup pill or a concentrated meat
pill for his noon day lunch.
He dispatched these while
working at his desk."
So he could be more
efficient as a result.
That's what they thought
was going to happen in 1999,
but it has not come
to pass obviously.
And why not?
Because I think food is
so much more than just
about nutrition and sustenance.
There's a whole
sort of psychology
behind our experience
of food, the way we eat
and what we enjoy eating.
And that is the theme for
the book, "The Perfect Meal."
Myself, I worked together
with Betina Piqueras-Fiszman,
my co-author, working in
a psychology department
at Oxford, trying to
understand the factors that
make one meal experience
better than another
or that it can ruin a
great evening simply
by just getting one sensory
cue or trigger wrong.
And this is what we can
think of as gastrophysics,
the new sciences of the table,
which means since 1984, when
Harold McGee came out with
his "On Food and Cooking,"
that was a whole three
decades we've had,
a little over, of sort of
science in the back of house,
science in the kitchen, science
of new techniques of food
preparation, a rotovaps and sous
vide and all sorts of stuff,
changing the way that
food is prepared,
at least in the
hands of some chefs.
We've also had the
kind of emergence
of all sorts of new
ingredients as well
to deliver textures
and spumes and foams
and all kinds of stuff
we had never had before.
Three decades, that's
taken us a long way,
and it's certainly
changed the way
that we eat, at least
sometimes, but it's
all science in the kitchen.
Where I think it's
changing now, and that's
kind of the idea
of gastrophysics,
is it's science moving
to the front of house,
to the dining tables,
in the restaurants,
because they're easy to study,
or can be, through to the home
dining, anywhere where we eat.
It's a science of the diner.
And it's gastrophysics.
So it's gastronomy, we're
interested in high end
food in the first instance.
But also physics
from psychophysics,
which is the kind of
psychology, the measurement
of the human-- what
different inputs lead
to different kind of outputs.
Normally it's done
with lights and sounds
in front of a computer screen,
but we want the gastrophysics
of real food experiences.
Study what matters, what doesn't
matter, and how to create
insights that are actionable
in the matter where or who
you might be serving food to.
I keep coming back
this sort of thing,
that food is so much more
than just about food.
So, imagine yourself
as the chef,
and you've learned
all the techniques.
And until recently you'd
kind of think, well,
if I know I source my
ingredients locally.
I prepare them beautifully.
Perhaps I give a
little attention
to how the food
appears on the plate.
If I do all that,
it'll be enough.
I can deliver great
meal experiences.
But in fact, I think,
you need to know
about the mind of the
diner as well in order
to change people's
behavior for the better
to deliver great
meal experiences.
What I'm seeing now,
kind of inspired
by the likes of Ferran Adria
in Spain and Heston Blumenthal,
just up the road in Bray, is a
whole generation of young chefs
who are popping up, starting
up, opening gastropubs,
culinary artistry
events in the UK
and elsewhere, who for the
first time are thinking,
I need to know how to
make great tasting food.
But on top of that,
I want to know
what's going in the head
of my diner or order
to really meet
their expectations
or completely confound
their expectations.
But I need to know
what's in here.
So a couple of examples of why
you need to know more than just
about how to prepare food well.
First one is this
kind of ugly beast
of the deep, the Patagonian
toothfish that has been
on restaurant menus for years.
It just was never very popular.
Would you order it yourself
on a menu in a restaurant?
Probably not.
If you saw the picture,
definitely not.
But simply a little
bit of rebranding
calling this Chilean sea
bass, exactly the same fish,
looks still as ugly.
But suddenly sales increased
by 1,300% in Australia,
North America, in the UK
simply by change of name,
completely changes
our food behavior,
what we choose to eat
and what we don't.
Sure, great food,
but on top of that,
you need to know
what to call it.
Another kind of classic example
of why the chef, I think,
needs to know about what's
going on in the diner's mind.
Here we have a dish, and
within the blink of an eye,
your brain has
decided what it is.
Your brain is a
prediction engine,
trying to figure out
where the nutritious
food is in the environment.
So you see that and
within 150 milliseconds,
your brain's decided, yeah,
that's probably ice cream,
probably cold, probably sweet.
I'll probably like it.
Maybe I'll have a scoop later.
But I'd have to go to the gym.
And probably the
flavor is a red fruit,
a raspberry or strawberry,
something like that.
All went through your mind
without you thinking, just
in the blink of an eye or less.
But the only problem
is, that's not
the flavor of this ice cream.
So this is actually a frozen
savory ice, popular in the UK
a century ago.
And this comes from
the Fat Duck Kitchens.
So it could be a smoked salmon
ice cream or a frozen crab
bisque ice cream.
So the chef makes
this dish, maybe
is the world's top
chef at the time.
He thinks it's
seasoned perfectly.
It fits into sort of the
theme of historic dining.
He brings it out and gives it
to some of his preferred guests
who are regulars at the
Fat Duck restaurant.
But when they put it in their
mouth and they taste it,
they're going to go, ugh.
I didn't like it.
It's too salty.
But the problem was, the
chef thought it was perfect.
He's the world's top chef.
But the diner said, no, it's
too salty, pulls a funny face,
does not like at the
time and does not
like it when they come back
two or three weeks later.
It will remain salty
in their experience.
The problem here is a
matter of expectations.
Because the diner
was thinking it
was going to be a sweet-tasting
strawberry or raspberry ice
cream.
In fact, it was
savory and salty.
Their expectations
were disconfirmed.
They didn't like it.
Whereas if I just
tell you before you
put a spoonful of
this to your lips,
that this is food 386, a
term that means nothing
to any of us, kind of
vaguely scientific sounding.
But that title for
the dish is enough
that when I give you, here,
a spoonful of my new dish,
food 386, suddenly
when you taste it,
you'll kind of withhold
your expectations
and it will taste seasoned
just right, the way the chef
experiences it.
So no matter what you
do in the kitchen,
if you don't know the
expectations of your diner,
you can't really
predict how they're
going to respond or optimize
the meal experience.
And if vision is
so important, we
might think about
the future of food.
Here we've got original sushi
on the left, augmented reality
sushi on the right.
This, we were working with
Katsu Kojima over in Japan.
There was about 70
vision scientists
thinking about a time, sometime
in the future, when maybe we've
fished the seas to extinction
of all our favorite sushi fish.
Could we, with our
headset, like the one
you see there on the
bottom right here.
Maybe you've been
watching your movies.
Then you have your dinner
and we can give you
the visual impression through
the headset, of your best
tasting, now extinct
fish on your sushi,
feed you the other
one, and maybe
for what you eat, but
eye is so important,
you have as good an
experience as you
would have done if you
could somehow still find
that now extinct fish.
Possibly.
Possibly not.
But again, it's this
idea of using technology
and our knowledge
of neuroscience
to deliver new, different
food experiences.
Sometimes just more stimulating
than anything we've had before.
At other times, trying
to think about how
to nudge people towards
healthier eating behaviors.
OK.
And food, as I say, it's so
much more than about food.
It's about the naming
and about expectations.
But it's also about mood
and those we dine with.
It's kind of social,
fundamentally
a social activity.
So I see chefs
who think, as they
have done for decades,
about palate cleansers.
We're in for a fancy meal.
We should have a palate
cleanser to clear up palette
before the first of the
chef's real dishes comes out.
And what will that be?
That will be maybe
a lime sorbet,
something acidic to cut
through something, apparently,
on your tongue.
But I think maybe the tongue
is the least interesting bit
of our experience of flavor.
We experience flavors
here in the brain.
So if I want to clean your
palette, what I really
want to do is clean your
mind, a mental palate cleanser
to get you into the right mood.
Because I know if you're
in the right mood,
you'll enjoy the
food that much more.
And this is the
intuitive solution
of the Chef Denis Martin,
who has a two Michelin star
restaurant in Vevey
in Switzerland
between Charlie Chaplin's
final resting house and Nestle
headquarters.
He's got two Michelin stars.
He kind of wants the third one.
Hasn't quite come yet.
Has a single sitting
dining experience,
based in a knitting
museum, which might
be part of the problem there.
But it's very inventive.
It's smoke and
mirrors and all sorts
of great, molecular or
modernist culinary practises.
When you go for that single
sitting dinner service,
you all arrive,
you're there at 7:00.
And you think well, we're all
here now and you look around.
And there's nothing on the
tables, no knives, no forks,
no glassware, nothing, just
this sitting on the middle
of each and every table.
And people would wait
and think, well, I'm
sure the first course is going
to come out sometime soon.
But it won't.
Nothing will happen until some
curious diner picks that thing
up off the table,
wondering whether it's
the salt or the pepper
shaker with a kind
of peculiar Swiss twist.
When they do that, when they
pick that little device up,
look underneath, it's
a silly, one euro toy.
It'll make a mooing sound.
The diner will
laugh in surprise.
And then within a few
moments, every table
in that two Michelin
star restaurant
will have their moo
cows in the air,
a chorus of mooing cows in a
restaurant full of laughing
diners.
The mood has been
elevated, enhanced,
and that is the
moment when Denis
brings out the first dish,
the mental palate cleanser.
Very simple, very easy.
I see other chefs in
culinary institutes
trying to think about
how to elevate the mood.
Do you put joke
cards on the table?
Or do you play some sort
of musical video clip
that makes everyone laugh
like the laughing policeman
or that video you see it
on YouTube of those four
quintuplets of babies.
One starts laughing and
that's starts the next one
and that starts the next one.
And they just cannot stop.
You can't watch that video
without yourself laughing,
I think.
And that could be a nice
mental palate cleanser.
Because food is always so much
more than just about the food.
It's all happening up here
in your mind, rather than,
I think, on your tongue
or in your mouth.
So we're looking how
to work sometimes
with some of the top chefs to
see how they have delivered
brilliant dining
experiences and trying
to turn that into research or
science and then kind of export
it out to whoever else.
But very often, we sort
of work more these days
with younger chefs,
those who have,
for the first time
started to think
about the minds of their diners.
And think about some
of the simple tricks
that they could
utilize to enhance
the quality of their food.
And it's not about using
these tricks to serve
bad food that will seem good.
It's about using the best
of your culinary skills
together with the
best of gastrophysics
to deliver something
better yet again.
And here we have the results
from a restaurant study
done in Scotland last year.
We have 140 diners in a Scottish
hotel in a fancy restaurant.
Half of those diners are served
this dish of Scottish fish
for their main course, but
they're given a heavy knife
and fork in their hands.
The other half of
the diners are eating
the same food on the same
day in the same restaurant
have been given the light
canteen knife and fork instead.
They're all eating
the same food.
We asked them, how much
do you like the food?
How artistic does it
seemed to be plated to you?
And in this context,
how much would you
be willing to pay for that dish
in a place like you are today?
And what we find, with the
heavy knife and fork in hand,
is people think the
food looks more artistic
and they're willing to
pay significantly more
for exactly the same
output from the kitchen.
A trend towards increased
liking didn't quite
reach significance here.
So when I go to those
kind of gastropubs
and these young chefs popping up
in the Oxfordshire countryside,
near the Oxford
department, I see
them so passionate
about the food
that they're trying to create.
But sometimes, they think well,
we can't afford heavy cutlery.
It's an expensive investment.
But you see results
like this and say, no,
the way to the knife
and fork should not
matter to a tasting
experience, but it does.
And if you go, and you think
carefully next time you
go to the Fat Duck
Restaurant, and you finally
get the cutlery, on course
three, four, or five,
you realize how heavy it is, and
realize, intuitively perhaps,
the culinary team have worked
that into the experience.
So heavier cup, heavier
glass, heavy can,
seems to-- heavier
book I think as well,
seems to make the
thing even better.
I say, the other chefs, they
care so much about the food.
And you go to an Indian
restaurant in Oxford
with an up and coming chef and
he's passionate about the food.
But he doesn't think
about the music.
And you're there in
the middle of July,
eating this Indian food, and the
restaurant manager got his iPad
on, blaring out Christmas
carols or something else that's
completely incongruent with the
food, with the time of year,
and it does spoil, to some
degree, the experience.
You cannot just concentrate
on the food all the time.
Out brain is picking
up this stuff
about the lighting, the smells,
and music, the chair we're
sitting on, even the
table we're sitting at
as well as the
waiter, that cutlery,
and integrating it
into a final judgment
about how much we like
that food and how much we
enjoyed the experience.
I also want stress, while some
of the underlying neuroscience
is kind of complicated, some
of the insights, I think,
are very actionable
and quite simple
for any chef, wherever in the
world they might be working.
And here's another
sort of simple one
that's come out of our work with
the Alicia Foundation, Ferran
Adria's kind of test
research kitchens,
just outside Barcelona.
And here we have a
dessert that looks again,
suspiciously like a
strawberry ice cream.
And in this case it is.
You're safe.
Your eyes did not mislead you.
But in this study, we
served exactly the same chef
prepared strawberry dessert,
either on a black plate
or a white plate.
About 30 or 40 people
eating the desert
from each plate on the
same day in the same sort
of a restaurant-like
environment.
We asked them how sweet
was the ice cream.
How much do you like it?
How fruity, and so on.
And what we find is that one
of those plates tastes sweeter.
Same batch of ice cream,
but one of those plates
tastes 10% sweeter.
Specifically, those
who were eating
from the round,
white plate, say this
tastes 10% sweeter,
about 15% more flavorful
than exactly the same dish
served on a black plate.
If that black plate was angular,
it would taste even less.
So round and white
seems to be very sweet.
Black and angular
is not at all sweet.
And we've done this research
with the Alicia Foundation
in Spain.
We've been to the
Paul Bocuse Cookery
School, the heart of
traditional French cuisine,
sustaining those French values.
They've been sort of
interested in this.
Now we know the plate matters,
even though we know it
shouldn't.
We want to know how it impacts
performance and experience.
And with diners paying in their
restaurant in the Paul Bocuse
Chateau just outside Lyon,
the same sort of result
holds up again.
Things that shouldn't
matter, but they really do.
Food is so much more
than just the food.
OK.
Really, that first
impression we get of food,
be it the color of
the red dessert.
Is it frozen salmon,
smoked salmon,
or is it really strawberry,
plays a key part
in sitting our expectations.
Then when we come
to taste the food,
those expectations
anchor our experience.
And maybe very
often, we really live
in a world of our expectations.
We occasionally test the
world and see, is it like I
expected it to be?
And if it is, more
or less, we carry
on living in our predicted
worlds as it were.
So that first visual
impression is important.
With that in mind, we
see, and especially
with all those diners these
days who are increasingly--
their experience of
fine dining restaurants
is all about the pictures
that they take and share
with their friends, that are
almost distracting some diners
now from their meal.
The chef brings the dish
out to the table, served
at just the right
temperature and the diner
wants to orient it and
then change the lighting,
stand up, take a picture, share
with their friends, by which
time the food is cold.
But really, we cannot ignore
the eye appeal of a dish now,
both the expectations it sets
for the diner when they are
there, but also how it's
perceived online, on TV,
via social networks or
an Instagram of plating.
Does it really matter though?
Does it matter how the
food looks to its taste?
That was a question
that young chef Charles
Michelle, working in the
lab in Oxford came up with.
He was in the Museum of
Modern Art in New York
staring at this
painting, Kandinsky 201.
It actually hangs
the other way up,
if anyone's familiar with it.
But he saw a mushroom
up there and mushrooms
ought to be kind of up
right and not upside down,
do he inverted the painting.
But when he read the
panel beside the painting.
Kandinsky-- it was
meant to be trying
to convey emotion directly,
the artist talking
through color and form.
And the chef is thinking,
well, aren't I an artist too?
I can create visually
stunning stuff.
Why can't I communicate
through my food, emotion
directly through color and form?
And so this is Charles
Michelle's interpretation
of Kandinsky's 201.
The Kandinsky on a plate.
Or in this case served on a
canvas, a painting canvas,
about a 31 element salad.
You might even eat
it with a paintbrush
if we're feeling
a bit adventurous.
So you're eating the
painting with a paintbrush.
The paintbrush may be scented
with the some truffle oil
or something.
And as you eat the
dish, this canvas
will stain with the
colors of those purees
and you have your own
modernist bit of art
to take home and hang on the
wall, should you so desire.
Does it matter?
Yes, it does.
People enjoy the food more
when it's plated artistically.
They're willing to pay more.
And they may eat more.
Well, in this case it's kind of
a healthy thing to be eating.
What do the numbers look like?
Here you've got them.
From 160 diners served at
Somerville College in Oxford,
where I teach, there's
a parent's day.
We have all the parents
coming in for lunch
to see their
nearest and dearest.
Half of the diners served
a regular tossed salad,
half of them on the left,
served a Kandinsky inspired.
You've got 80 plates to make.
You can't do the full
work, but something
in the right direction
Kandinksy inspired dish,
and you see how much
people are willing to pay,
a more than doubling
of price for exactly
the same ingredients served to
exactly the same people, simply
by getting the eye
appeal, jut right.
Making it look visually as
stunning as it could be.
And we're seeing this with
fancy sellers like this.
We've seen it in home dining.
Simple garden salads,
the same sorts of effect
seem to hold true, that
getting the eye appeal right
is important for the chef.
But what can we do
to help the chef?
Maybe the chefs, you
know, intuitively they
get it all right.
So here's a dish we saw
from Albert Landgraf.
He's a Brazilian
chef, works out of Sao
Paulo, one of South
top 50 restaurants.
Saw that on the internet one
day and thought, wow, that's
a visually stunning dish.
It's kind of onions
with tapioca, vinegar,
and sugar, and spume and stuff.
It's all those pink onions
oriented away from the diner,
towards 12:00.
I asked the chef,
why did you do that?
Can we borrow your
plate for an experiment?
He says, yes.
I'll just play around
with the plating.
That just seemed to
feel right to me.
But is it right?
Are we happy to let the chefs
just go on their intuitions
or can we use the
power of the internet
to evaluate, crowdsource,
the plating of our cuisine?
So take that plate of food,
stick it on the internet,
allow people to rotate
the plate, and say,
do you care how this dish
would be served to you if you
were coming to the restaurant?
What orientation would you like?
And they'll pick some
orientation for this dish.
Here, from about 200
people tested online.
Here, from 2000 people tested
at London's Science Museum.
And for any of you
interested in this,
currently for the whole year,
there's a cravings exhibit
and you can take part in
some of these experiments
on rotating famous chef's plates
online or in the Science Museum
itself.
Here, about 2000 people.
And in fact, when we
average their preferences,
they do care.
Each dot here is a
person, potential diner.
And those dots are not equally
spread around the circle.
The majority of
diners like something
with the onions
pointing away from them.
In fact, they like it
at about 3.4 degrees
to the right of 12:00.
Close enough for the
chef not to worry.
His intuition did bear
out with 2000 people.
But it's an interesting
idea of space
here, because the chef can
think about a new dish,
take a picture of it one
evening, we put online,
and by the next morning, ready
for that evening service,
we'll quite often have
500 or 1,000 people
saying whether they care.
And if they do care,
what is the orientation
or their preference.
And that preference may
convert into higher willingness
to pay or more enjoyment.
Now what we can do
is say, OK, that
was a dish as the
chef prepared it.
What more can we do?
Well, we can hack the plate now.
We can take some of those
dishes from famous chefs,
take out the elements, say,
is three the right number?
And chefs are often told odds
better than even numbers.
Would you like it if all the
onions pointed to the right,
to the up, to the inside,
all in different directions?
We can hack the plate.
Put it online and next morning,
have hundreds or possibly
thousands of people saying,
what is the ideal orientation.
And maybe there's something
in the design space
of that plate that is better
than what the chef has
intuitively come up with.
That's the idea of
hacking the plate
and designing culinary
experiences for virtually using
the power of the internet.
Well, I'll just give you
this one example here
of why it's not always the case
that what the chef intuits,
people like.
So if you go to many a
modernist restaurant these days,
you'll find lots of this
kind of asymmetric plating.
All the food is layered
down one side of the plate.
The other part is just
left like a blank canvas.
That doesn't seem to work
from the visual aesthetics
literature.
We like balance and harmony.
This is very unbalanced,
kind of unharmonious.
And when we show these
plates on the internet,
when we serve them in
cafeterias or restaurants,
people do not like
them and they're
willing to pay less than for a
harmonious, central, balanced
plating.
Does that mean that the
chef shouldn't do it?
No, but at least
they know they're
going against what the
majority of people like,
so their objective
for doing this,
maybe it's to be remembered
five years hence.
As yeah, he was the chef that
did that really weird stuff,
put it all on the
side of the plate.
You could become
iconic in that way.
But if what you're
aiming for is kind
of the greatest
enjoyment of at the time,
that certainly is not it.
OK.
So think, leave plating
aside and think a bit
about technology, and how
that could be integrated
into the dining experiences.
And here's one dish that's
served at the Fat Duck in Bray.
Fat Duck currently in
Melbourne, but we're back
in the UK about 10 days
and this dish, I believe,
will still be on the menu.
It comes out of research we
did with a chef in Oxford
in Science Oxford,
about six years ago,
where we served people oysters.
Asked them how much they
liked the oysters, how salty
they tasted.
And found that when we
play the sounds of the sea,
people say the oysters taste
better, but no more salty
with seaside sounds with sea
gulls swarming over head than
if we play modern jazz.
If we play restaurant cutlery
noises or farm yard chickens,
or all sort of sounds,
but the kind of congruent
sounds of the sea, make
that food taste better.
The Fat Duck research kitchen
could then take that insight
and turn it into this dish
that looks like the sea.
But also when the waiter
comes to the table,
they'll have a conch
shell in the other hand,
out of which dribbles some
earbuds from a little mini
iPod.
You'll hear the sounds of the
sea before you taste the food.
And if you see diners
in the restaurant
with this dish, which has been
the signature dish since 2008,
up until the present time, when
they come in, they're talking,
they're chatting, it's exciting.
It's that once in a
lifetime meal experience,
they put the earbuds
in, and they're silent.
For five minutes,
their attention
is focused on the
food, and we know
it tastes better than
it otherwise would.
Silence for a whole
meal, I don't think so.
But for one course,
it certainly works.
And from the first examples,
I think of technology,
not at the back of
house, but technology
at the front of house, being
used, not to distract diners,
but somehow to enhance
their experience of food.
That's a real passion for us,
how to take the technology
and enhance the meal experience.
Here's something that not
only we are passionate about,
but also a great number
of those modernist chefs,
if you look in the newspapers,
at new restaurant openings,
there's a lot of
stuff like this.
We're in Sublimotion in
Shanghai, Ultraviolet, sorry,
in Shanghai.
And here we have Paul
Pairet, a French chef,
serving kind of a fish
and chips inspired dish
to a single sitting
of 12 diners.
We're in Shanghai,
a French chef,
serving kind of an English dish,
fish and chips, or thereabouts.
So what does he do?
He plays the sounds of the sea
again, followed up by the sound
the Beatles, a
quintessentially English band.
He projects a British
flag on the table.
And of course,
because we're trying
to simulate England
with this dish,
we put the rain-spattered
windows on the backdrop.
Each backdrop changing
with each dish,
but it is technology
kind of creating
this immersive, experiential,
theatrical, magical even,
tasting experience that is
so much more than the food.
That's at high end,
maybe $1200 a person,
if you're lucky
enough to get a shot.
But maybe it could be
something as simple as this.
You go to the restaurant.
You read about the
sound of the sea dish.
And you think, well, why
couldn't your tablet,
why can't that be plate wear?
It's like there's
technology and there's food.
We keep them separate
because one might get
into the keyboard of the other.
But now there are
waterproof tablets.
You can stick them in
the dishwasher, I guess.
Steak and chips I don't
suppose would work
from that kind of hard surface.
But other finger foods.
Maybe the sound of the sea.
If we actually ate what
looked like the kind of sea
underneath, how you could
tell stories about a dish,
about the origins
of the ingredients.
And again, use the technology
to enhance the experience.
Are people doing it?
There are few chefs
out there who are now
serving at least one course from
a tablet, in Spain, in the UK,
and in Switzerland.
I think we're going to see
more or it as they push to see,
what are you trying to do here?
Why is it worthwhile?
How much better can you
make the experience,
dining through a tablet,
bringing technology
to the table in a way
that takes us away
from this, from the distracted
diners who are fiddling
with their mobile device, not
concentrating on the food,
not sharing the moment
of dining with those
who are physically present.
This kind technology
that at the moment,
we see some chefs around
the world, who banned--
said you cannot take pictures
of the food in my restaurant.
Put those mobiles away.
Just eat the food.
Enjoy the moment.
Leave the technology aside.
That's an extreme reaction.
We think there is a
way to bring technology
in to augment, to enhance, and
to make memorable experiences.
Here's the way it happens.
We go from the sound
of the sea, which
is the chef at the
three Michelin star
restaurant bringing
the technology for you
for once in a
lifetime experience.
What we want to do is
take the technology that's
in everybody's pockets
and incorporate it
into the experience.
We're still in a world of sound
and sort of digital seasoning.
And here we are 2013,
with our culinary artist,
Caroline Hobkinson
at the House of Wolf
restaurant in
Islington, North London,
with our sensory tasting menu.
But the key course here
is the sonic cake pop.
And on the menu, you can sort of
see here, take out your phone,
if you want to make your dessert
sweeter, dial 08456802419.
If you want to make your
dessert more bitter,
take your mobile out,
dial a different number.
What's going on there?
Well, here we have a
diner in the restaurant,
listening to some music perhaps.
Perhaps not.
Play that one again.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
CHARLES SPENCE: Sorry?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
CHARLES SPENCE: What did he say?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
CHARLES SPENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
So, what this man is
hearing on his headphone,
is like a [BUZZING].
It's not really a very
nice sound at all.
It's kind of a distorted
traffic noise from an underpass,
very low in pitch.
Or if they dial a
different telephone number,
what their hearing is this.
And the question is, which of
those two sounds is bitter.
[BUZZING] Or this
tinkling sound.
The majority of people, when we
asked them in the restaurant,
when we ask them online, when
we asked them in the lab,
say the second sound feels--
[TINKLING] There we go.
--sweeter somehow.
It's not literally sweeter
because tastes do not
have a sound.
And yet, people will
say this is sweet,
whereas [BUZZING],
that is bitter.
If you've got a coffee
or a dark chocolate,
and you have that in your
mouth, when you hear that,
it brings out the bitter
notes by about 5% or 10%.
So this is a whole new
world using technology
that's in your pocket to deliver
digital seasoning, 10% more
sweetness without any calories.
Who wouldn't be
potentially interested?
We trial it in the
modernist restaurants
because the chefs are
innovative, creative,
will try things out.
They are their own boss.
But the hope is what starts
there, the proof of principle
can then be extended
to the mass market
to make all our lives better.
Two examples of how that's
kind of extending out.
On the one hand, we have a
Haagen-Dazs Concerto app.
You go to the store,
you buy your ice cream.
You scan the QR code on
the lid, and then you
see some musicians playing
on top of your ice cream tub
through your mobile device.
Different musicians
playing different music
for different
flavors of ice cream.
When they wrap up after
about two minutes,
then your ice
cream is supposedly
soft enough to scoop.
Those aren't the
best substantiations
but there are a number
things like this from Krug
has also its sensory
app that will give you
music to play to match the
taste of each of its champagnes.
This is I think the future
of technology and food.
Prove a principal in the
modernist restaurant,
and then to the mass
market and the supermarket.
Or in airlines with
British Airways, last year
for its long haul flights,
delivering this kind
of digital seasoning menu.
You choose something to eat from
the trolley when it comes down.
And then you can
plug into the headset
and hear music that has
been designed to enhance
the experience of the food.
Maybe it's sweet music
like you just heard.
Or maybe you've
ordered the lasagna
and you want some Italian
music to bring out
the ethnicity of the dish.
Various ways of doing
it, but it's technology
being used to enhance food.
So when I saw this
coming out last month,
you kind of think, this is
kind of what's going to happen
and the way of the future.
Munchery and Google
Play Music team up
to turn a simple meal
into a dining experience.
You go online.
I guess you order your food.
It arrives.
And then what are you going to
listen to on the hi-fi in home?
Why not offer people a
range of music designed
to enhance the
experience, based on what
you know about their
music preferences that
built on the neuroscience?
Do you want to make
things sweeter,
is a little bit more savory,
a little sourer, more bitter?
Whatever it is, there will
be a musical parameter
that can be matched
to your musical tastes
and delivered
along with the food
to enhance the home
dining experience,
just like you had in one
of those fancy modernist
restaurants.
And I'll leave with a final
example, which will sort
of bring everything together.
We've got the sounds that
change the experience.
And when we do these experiments
in restaurants or culinary
artistry.
And I'd really like to test
in somewhere like this.
May be a bit like your
dining facility here.
You might think is
it a restaurant?
Are they experimenting
on me or am I just having
a great tasting experience.
And there's kind of
an interesting world
where you don't know.
Is this a science
lab or a dining room?
It's kind of both.
They can change the temperature,
the lighting, the music,
they can vibrate the table.
They can do all sorts of stuff.
They may measure your responses.
But you might have
a great experience
of eating at the same time.
We want to test in
these great restaurants,
but if you're paying
$1,200 a shot,
my department is not going
to pay for 100 subjects
to go and have dinner
at one of these.
So we can't literally test very
often in this very high end
experience restaurants.
So what we have to do instead
is create experiential events
that capture the idea.
And this is the idea of
the Singleton Sensorium.
It was in London, November,
2013, I think now.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
You come to a building in Soho,
a [INAUDIBLE] maker's studio.
You're given a glass of whisky.
You're taken into
the green room.
We have grass on the floor,
deck chairs, croquet hoops.
We have the sounds of
the English summer.
You tell me how grassy
that whisky tastes, smells
on the nose, how
sweet on the palate,
and how woody the
texture of the aftertaste
once you've swallowed.
OK, had your whisky,
made your rating.
We then take you
downstairs to this room.
[TINKLING SOUND]
Same whisky in hand,
score card in the other.
500 people over three nights.
Suddenly, there's
that tinkling sound.
It's coming from the
ceiling, because these
are the sounds of sweetness.
The room itself is red, because
red is the color of sweetness.
Everything in this room is
round, because round is sweet.
Angular is bitter.
Round window frames, round
floor plan, round, poof,
round everything.
Trying to connote sweetness.
And finally take your
whisky, your score card,
to the woody room.
We've got the sound of wood,
everything we can think of,
the sound of a wood fire,
creaking wood doors.
[CRACKLING, CREAKING DOOR, BASS
 FIDDLE]
Double bass wooden instruments,
a walk through the woods.
We've got wood on the
floor, stressed wood
on the floor, a dead tree behind
me this picture was taken.
Rate your whisky again.
You know it's the same whisky
in all three environments.
And yet, when you look
at your score card
after 15 minutes going through
these three environments,
you find that the whisky
tasted a lot woodier
in the woody room.
Tasted about 10% sweeter
in the sweet room
and the grassiness was
brought out in the green room.
And some people
went through this
and said, well, I knew
what you were trying to do.
Of course, you
wanted me to say it
was more grassy in the green
room, so I did the opposite.
They were still affected
by the environment.
They couldn't just give a
straight rating every time.
And if you roll up the
300 or 3,000 people
we've tested in these kind of
multi-sensory, experiential
events, you can demonstrate that
exactly the same food or drink
tastes dramatically
different as a function
of the lighting,
the music, and all
the other environmental cues.
So I'll wrap up there.
But just leave you
with a couple of areas
that we're working on now.
I think the modernist
restaurant is a great place
to work because the
chef is their own boss,
they're creative,
they're innovative.
They can put stuff
on the menu if they
believe in neuroscience story.
Some of it will work.
Some of it will
work brilliantly.
Others may fail.
But of course that Michelin
starred restaurant experience
is very exclusive.
Most of us can't afford to
go there, especially not
us academics working in Oxford.
Maybe it's a once
in a lifetime thing.
So the question is how to
take the insights from there
to the real world to affect
all of our dining experiences.
And we're currently
trying to translate
some of those insights about
plate color, cutlery weight,
lighting, music, and so on,
into the world of hospital food.
You have all these patients in
hospitals whose hospital stays
are prolonged because they're
underfed, under nutritionalized
because the food looks so
horrible, tastes so horrible.
And there's a business case to
have enhanced sensory designer
food to improve nutrition
and reduce bed nights.
We're thinking about
foods of the future.
So we're working with Ben
Reade, who was formerly
head of the Nordic
Food Lab and Jozef
Youssef, a chef in
London, thinking
about how to make these little
critters more appealing.
The food of the future,
highly nutritious,
highly proteinaceous,
very good for you.
You think, uck, disgusting.
But you know, there
are other things
that you think were disgusting,
like ripe French cheeses,
and yet somehow, you've
come to love them.
So how to make you
love these guys?
Through kind of the
graying silver palate,
all those people
are over 70 years
of age, the age
at which you start
to lose your ability
to taste and to smell,
two senses for which there are
no prostheses to bring it back.
What can you do to improve
their dining experiences
through finally
kind of the nudging?
What we do for the obese
populations in terms
of plate color, plate size, and
other kind of tricks or rules
of mind that might be used
to make people satisfied
with a little bit less?
All very big challenges,
all very important,
but I think the
best insights here
may well come from that
interface between design
technology, the high end
chef, and the measurement
scientists such as myself.
So I shall leave it
there, but hopefully
convinced you why this
is an exciting area
and why I think technology
and food will in the future
be merged seamlessly in
our day-to-day experience.
And it's a very exciting time to
be here with all the technology
that's coming out
it;s [INAUDIBLE].
You know, you go
back to the 1930s
and you find FT Marinetto,
one of the Italian futurists,
they were thinking about
multi-sensory dining.
They were spraying
atomizers over the food.
They were serving
you frog's legs
while listening to the
sound of croaking frogs.
They were having you
rub textured materials
while you dined.
They were miscoloring food.
They were dining in the dark.
They were doing
all that in 1930.
They had the ideas, the
inspiration, the desire,
but what they did not have is
the technology to bring it off
in the [INAUDIBLE].
But we do have the
technology now.
We have the interest.
We have the chefs and
we have the scientists
working together.
And I'm very excited about
what the perfect meal might
be a few years hence.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
MALE SPEAKER: We have time
for a couple of questions.
Questions.
Right.
We're going to
use the throw box,
so you can throw it
and catch it, and then
speak into the black circle.
AUDIENCE: OK.
You can hear me?
MALE SPEAKER: Yes.
AUDIENCE: During
these experiments,
do you get the
different responses
based on where the person
is from, like culture?
CHARLES SPENCE:
So sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, I believe that
that sweet and bitter sound
will be sweet and
bitter across the world.
It will be sweet and bitter
to a chimpanzee and to a rat.
Why so?
Because at birth, we're all
born sticking our tongues
out and down.
If you put a bitter
taste on a newborn chimp,
rat, human's tongue, bleck,
because bitterness is poisonous
probably.
We learn to eject it.
Put a sweet taste on
a newborn's tongue,
the tongue will go [SLURPING]
licking, ingesting calories,
growth, that's what we need.
So we're all born sticking
our tongues out and down
to bitter tastes, out
and up to sweet tastes.
And maybe we just captured
something of that difference
in there or there.
It's there in all of us.
Our brains pick up the
statistics of the environment.
This is a useful
statistic to know about.
Nevertheless our
brain can't tell
the difference between
an incorporated in sound.
That should be, I think,
predictionally universal.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong.
When it comes to what
instrument is sweetness,
we find in Western
populations, it maybe
a tinkling piano or wind chime.
Would it be the same instrument
that Chinese or South Americans
would match to sweetness?
We don't know for sure yet.
But we are currently starting to
go around the world in person.
So we've been testing them
Himba tribe of Kaokoland
in Namibia, with no
written language,
no schooling, no supermarkets.
What do they think about the
shape of taste and sound?
And we're also using
kind the online testing
that is now allowing us to
run studies in seven or eight
countries simultaneously.
Currently, we're looking
both at the color of food.
Is red sweet everywhere
in the world or not?
And we're also
looking at plateware.
So if you go to China,
they may serve noodles
in what looks like my dog's
bowl, kind of bashed up metal.
Looks terrible to me, but
they think it looks fine.
Whereas, some of the
Western plate ware
might look just a bit odd.
So we are presenting images
of food, plateware, glassware,
arrangements, odd and even
numbers on the plate in the UK
and in many other countries
to try and pick up
those similarities
and differences.
And it's going to be
a bit of both I think.
There will be some universals.
Probably maybe sweet will be
round, more or less the world
over, I think too.
But also kind of the
culture-specific ones,
that's something that
then maybe the chef
would want to know about.
Because if they see, as they
increasingly try and get
kind of personalized
meals for their diners,
if you know you've
got a big booking
of a sort of Chinese delegation
coming to your restaurant
tonight, maybe they
don't like odd numbers
in the plate in the way
that a Western diner does.
Maybe they like even
numbers instead.
And if you have that
information in hand,
you kind of personalize
the experience a bit.
It's a rich area.
Takes a long time to do.
But we are interested
in making little steps.
AUDIENCE: OK, thank you.
AUDIENCE: I have the mic, so
I'm going to ask the question.
Fascinating topic,
amazing speech.
Thank you for coming.
Along the last comment
you made, my question
is along those lines.
I think a lot of the
examples you showed
were focused on creating a
kind of a similar experience
for the whole restaurant
or the whole table.
Can you push that to like maybe
send a survey before coming
to the restaurant, to say,
how are you feeling today?
CHARLES SPENCE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Was it a good day?
Was it a bad day?
CHARLES SPENCE: Yep.
AUDIENCE: Or tracking
your customers over time,
to say, hey, that guy
actually prefers this.
And then let's cater
to that individual.
Like push it to it's limits.
CHARLES SPENCE: So there's
kind of two questions in there.
On the one hand, it's
about is this one
of these experiences as a
whole environmental experience?
And that's true.
Unless we're
working with them we
can't really build
stuff exactly,
but are working with
the lab in Bristol
to try and make augmented,
sort of digital glassware
that will only play sweet music
when you pick the glass up
and tilt it to your lips.
And it's personalized to you.
It happens you only hear
the sound when you taste.
And it's kind of directed
or hyper-directionalized.
Because we are trying to
personalize where we can.
But it is sometimes a challenge.
And then the other part of
the question, about sort
of the personalisation.
We work closely with Chef
Jozef Youssef up in Maida Vale.
I'm always trying to convince
him about the next dining
concept to get his
creative juices working.
And what I want to do is
like personalized for you,
which involves you book a table
and then you get a plastic bag.
It's says, please spit in
the bag and send it off.
And you've got about two months
between booking and actually
arrival.
And that bag is off
to our colleagues
in Monell Chemical Senses and
they can analyze your spittle
and then personalize
a meal for you.
They can say, you'll be
a super taster or not.
You'll be anosmic,
will be unable to smell
this cork taint, like myself.
Coriander will
taste soapy to you,
so don't put that in the dish.
And you can get
eight or 10 perhaps
predictions that could
be used by a chef
to personalize the thing.
That'll be part of it.
But then also it would be I
think the whole personalization
is a real interesting one.
So what you could
also do, you see
the success of Coca Cola
putting your name on the bottle.
That's personalized.
It's kind of meaningless
personalization, but it works.
You see Starbucks writing
your name on the cup.
Why?
Because it makes the
coffee taste better.
Kind of personalization
from the genetic level
to these other kind of
more [INAUDIBLE] ones.
You can just wrap
all that together
and it's a personalized
experience.
Which could be nice,
but I think I've
seen there was press coverage
last week in The Times,
I think The Guardian about
the reopening of the Fat Duck
restaurant.
And there it was announced that,
like some US restaurants, when
you book a table two months in
advance of your reservation,
they'll start Googling you.
What do we know
about this person?
What do they like?
When were they born?
Maybe they'll deliver a
dish from your childhood.
and some of the response to
that, I heard that about 100
diners, as soon as
that article came out,
kind of canceled
the reservation.
I like personalized,
but I don't want
you to be probing into
my darkest secrets.
So you can make it and
you can do an obvious way.
But maybe one of the nicest
examples of personalization,
I think, is from
the Fat Duck, where
for the first few courses,
as in many other restaurants,
they give you finger food.
And part of the purpose
of that finger food
is to see how you interact,
to figure out whether you're
a left or right hander.
And then without
telling you anything,
if they figure out
you're a lefty,
your food and the cutlery
will be arranged slightly
differently, just for you.
No one says a word.
But somehow, hopefully
it just feels just right.
The evening flows.
It's personalized for you
without you ever realizing,
but hopefully it delivers
a better experience.
Whether you make people wear
it or not, probably not.
There is a lot you can do.
The chef says no.
He doesn't like the
idea of spit in a bag.
We need a better name but--
MALE SPEAKER:
Question in the front.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I had a question
about the experiment
you did with the white
plate and the black plate
and the sense of sweetness.
Do you think that it was the
white that was associated
specifically with sweetness
or if the question had been,
is this a saltier
food, would they also
have experienced a heightened
sense of salt as well?
CHARLES SPENCE: OK.
So I think it is sweetness.
So we've repeated the
experiment in Paul Bocuse, where
each week the chefs
make a different dessert
as a part of their training.
And then that dessert is served
on a white or a black plate.
So I think, from a few, we're
talking about five or six
experiments now, as some
other groups have, it's true,
you're mostly asked
about sweetness.
but I think somewhere
in that mix,
we have asked about
other taste sensations.
But it seems to be about sweet.
Whether enhanced
sweetness is a good thing,
whether that means you
like the food more,
really depends on how it
came from the kitchen.
So we've done one version of
this in a Scottish hotel, where
the dessert, a sticky toffee
pudding, was, I think,
too sweet.
And then when you added
sweetness from the white plate,
you thought, yeah, it's really
sweet, but I don't like it.
It's gone a bit too far.
It's hard to know.
We don't really the reason why.
We just know it happens.
It could be that that dessert--
we know if we actually
change the color of a food,
it will change the taste.
You never see colors
by themselves.
You always see them set against
a contrasting background.
So maybe the color
of the plate serves
to change the apparent
color of the food.
And that's part of
how things work.
Or maybe it's just
from your lifetime.
You never think about it,
but in fact, your brain
is kind of making records
of wherever you've
eaten, what you've eaten off.
Maybe there's black slates
normally presaged the cheese
board or something else.
So maybe savory food is
more normally associated
with those angular,
black plateware.
And you've just learned the
statistics of the environment
and play them back here.
I'm not sure.
AUDIENCE: I guess I'm asking,
if there something about white
that is generally [INAUDIBLE]?
Like could it be
that purple could
be chilly and yellow
could be [INAUDIBLE]?
CHARLES SPENCE: Yep.
So what we do sort of with Chef
Youssef and his synesthesia
dinner.
Just closed last month
or two months ago.
We served the first
course-- He served
the first course of the menu was
four verified spoons of taste.
Sweet, bitter, salty, sour.
One green, one red, one
white, and one browney-black.
And the task for the diner
was, the waitress would just
randomly put these four
spoons on the table.
And she says, well,
the chef recommend
you start with the salty, then
have the bitter, then sour,
and end on a sweet note.
And disappears.
And you're left
wondering, well, how
do I know which one's which?
Well, you do know,
and you're challenged
to arrange the spoons
in the right order,
sour, bitter, salt, then sweet.
Then you can look
around the table
and see how many other people
agreed that those tastes do
have specific colors.
And from that we find, that a
pinky-red is most definitely
kind of sweet in
the food itself.
White tends to be
salty, white and blue.
Yellow and green are sour.
And browney-black
and purple tends
to be bitter in many situations.
Probably more work to be done.
Certainly I know we're often
asked about what could you
do to reduce salt in food?
Because that's a big health
concern, not just sugar.
It certainly is the most
challenging one for us
in terms of sound.
I always play the salty sound,
sweet, bitter, salty, sour
sounds. and I always play
the salty sound lasts.
Because it's hardest one
to capture sonically.
Not quite sure why.
And in terms of color, if I
change the color of a food,
it's also-- I can
make it sweeter
or I can make it more sour.
But I find it very difficult
to make it more salty.
Perhaps because in
the environment,
salty foods come in
all sorts of colors.
So there isn't something
very clear there.
And perhaps also, our
response to saltiness,
we're not born
liking or disliking
salt. It comes online
after some months.
Whereas, we're born
liking sweet and bitter.
And perhaps those other
tastes have a head start.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I'm curious to know how much
you extend this from restaurant
environment to the home,
and whether you actually
would apply some of this when
you prepare a meal at home?
CHARLES SPENCE: Yeah.
So certainly there are some
things that are easy to do,
some things that are harder.
And you haven't met my wife.
So there's a challenge there
between the neuroscientist,
the gastrophysicist says,
and what Mrs. Spence says.
And she wins in the
home environment.
So I have lots of angular
black plates, very good
for certain foods.
But I have to keep them in the
lab, because she won't let me.
The cutlery's heavy.
I've got that one through.
And when it comes to the music
that we play when we're eating,
that's certainly a part.
And we quite often
have these kind
of dinner parties with the chef
in the lab and all the students
together.
I'm cooking and doing
some experimenting.
You can buy the cheap
one euro light bulbs now,
remote control, change the
color as we eat the food.
You've got the tone generator
to find the music that
matches the taste of the beer.
And we do lots of
experimentation, things
like the Kandinsky on a plate.
That was served kind of in a
home environment to see a bit
about how things
work before going
to the live, big experiment.
So that's the best place to do
it, in the lab dinners at home.
And then the battle
with um, yeah.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
You know, there's a saying that
says, the way to a man's heart
is through his stomach.
And I saw a TV program
with Heston Blumenthal,
cooking Valentines
Day meals for couples.
And afterwards, they reported
feeling more in love.
So is there a connection
between science and food?
CHARLES SPENCE: Yes, so I
advised some of the courses
on the Heston the TV lunch.
My trip, it was a
hot chili, which
I've used for
years, decades now,
that kind of releases a
flustering and arousal
and pupil dilation.
And the person
sitting opposite you
might confuse that
for signs of love.
It works very well, I think.
I think there's a great book by
Bunny Crumpacker, a great name,
"The Sex Life Of Food."
And she-- kind of from
2006, and she sort
of brings these two
things together.
And that maybe in
a way, you think,
well, our brains are
designed for the three
Fs, sort of feeding,
foraging, and something else.
So two of those three are,
because of what the brain does,
so there's food and love or sex
should be intimately linked.
And I know there are some
companies starting up
who are trying to bring
these things closer,
so for a certain
sort of audience,
when you go to a hotel, maybe
you're thinking about romance.
And they might deliver
a multi-sensory edible.
But, how shall I put it?
Enhancing the romantic
moment as well.
That border, say, is
an interesting one.
Probably you've seen, if
you do the brain scanner,
you'll see many of
the sort of same areas
in the brain lighting up with
great food and other things.
MALE SPEAKER: Final question.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Charles.
I love the evidence
that you put forward
to show how there's a real
connection between being
thoughtful and creative about
multi-sensory approaches
and how people enjoy the
experience in a restaurant.
I'm curious what you think
about what opportunities there
are for creating really great
multi-sensory environments
in either a business context
or in other contexts.
So for us, when we
meeting each other,
we want to have a
great experience
so we can be more productive.
Similarly with clients.
So any tips or do we just need
to take them to the Fat Duck?
CHARLES SPENCE: I think
the multi-sensory approach
could be applied anywhere.
And we have done work about
a decade ago with ICI Paints
and Qwest's looking at
fragrance and paint color
for productive
working environments.
Maybe that was more
for spotting typos
than it was for any
real, genuine kind
of innovative, creative thought.
But we have worked there
for a number of years.
It certainly does
work-- there's evidence
that the use of
fragrance can-- so,
if you're stuck in
a certain mindset,
then if you change any aspect
of the sensory environment,
it can almost refresh or
restart your mental processes
so you're more likely to
have the good thoughts.
If you're in one
environment, you're
stressed, that stress
gets associated
with the smell of
that environment.
Go somewhere else, different
color, different scent,
it helps.
I see also a lot on touch.
So some of the companies that
we have worked with-- I mean,
touch is like,
it's not necessary.
It's kind of a luxury rather
than a necessity one feels.
And yet from the emerging
body of neuroscience,
our skin is our biggest sense.
And it's full of these receptors
that love to be stroked
or to be groomed.
And if you do give people
a lunch time massage,
say, that leads to significant
improvement in performance
afterwards, to lowering
tension and it can lead
to many other sort of benefits.
So I think certainly through
touch, through smell,
certainly color, illumination
levels, can change,
can make us more
alert, more relaxed,
can just serve to
completely change the scene.
And I also really
worry about two things.
One is sometimes, with
some of the companies,
they have sort of innovation
workshop or science workshops,
and too often they're in the
bottom of some terrible hotel
in a windowless room.
That you're stuck
there for 48 hours.
And you think that is not the
environment for creativity.
And also from Charles
Michelle, the guy
who made the Kandinsky
on a plate dish,
he comes from Colombia,
as do many of my students.
And there it's kind of a
country with 50 years of turmoil
and war.
And you think of sort of the
multi-sensory approach there.
It's kind of a
peacemaking process.
And so, this whole idea of
kind of gastro diplomacy
becomes kind of an
interesting one.
How many meetings
where they don't
think about deciding the
fate of a nation and no one
serves any food or it's
dreadful food or-- would
things have gone differently
if somebody had paid attention
to that?
For my students
who've been here,
they say, they
were very impressed
about the gustatory element
to some of the things
that you were doing.
MALE SPEAKER: Thank
you very much.
Please join me in
thanking Charles.
[APPLAUSE]
