I’d like to begin with a simple question
my show of hands who here enjoys eating
good now that’s a clear majority of us
but if I were to ask you why well that’s
a little bit more difficult to
articulate but most of us our answers
would come in kind of one of two broad
categories sustenance nutrition and
well-being being one of them and the
other being the more hedonistic sensory
pleasures and satiety that we get from
food
now there’s one characteristic that’s
common to each of these elements and
that is flavor but what is flavor well
this is a question I had just under ten
years ago and it was sparked by a chance
encounter with one professor charles
spence he’s head of the cross-modal lab
at oxford university and as an
experimental psychologist has a keen
interest in understanding how we
perceive flavor but not just using our
chemical senses senses of smell and
touch and taste but how we use all of
our senses now eating without doubt is
one of the most multi-sensory activities
that we as humans engage in on a daily
basis and this research is allowing us
unique insights into understanding the
association’s the perceptions and the
expectations that we have when it comes
to the foods that we eat now since
having met professor spence my team and
I are kitchen Theory have both engaged
in the academic research but as well try
to find ways of taking the research out
of the lab and finding practical
applications for the real world now
before I go any further I’d like to
share one key insight that I’ve had over
these years and rather than leave this
to kind of a concluding note I’d like us
to begin with this idea plant the seed
so the
we can allow ourselves lend our
imaginations towards the possible
innovations in creativity that it holds
and the idea is very very simple and
it’s this flavor is a construct of the
mind rather than just a sensory
perception in the mouth and although we
may localize the perception of flavor
into our mouths
it’s actually all the expectations the
perceptions the judgments and the
enjoyment all reside in the brain which
is being fed with rich sensory
information from each of our senses our
sense of taste touch smell vision audio
all of them paint this rich picture of
flavor now if we take this idea that we
perceive flavor not in the mouth but we
perceive flavor in our brains
well this begs the question how should
we be designing food experiences that
encourage people towards making more
sustainable and more nutritious food
choices and I’m not just talking about
in restaurants but what about in schools
hospitals care homes what I’d like to do
now is just share three very kind of
quick and brief examples and you’re
going to play along with me here I’m
going to share three quick examples of
some of the research and look at some of
the potential applications for this so
here are the colors aren’t so clear but
here you have four edible elements one
is red one is white one is black and one
is green now what I’d like you to do in
your minds is assign each one of these
colors to one of your four basic tastes
so salty bitter sour sweet I’d like you
to assign one of those four to one of
the four colors you have so you have red
white black and green and we’re looking
to assign a basic taste of salty bitter
sour and sweet now there is no right or
wrong answer to this and based on our
background our cultural upbringing and
all the foods we’ve been exposed to are
over
lifetime will all have different
expectations and different answers but
what’s interesting is having gonoro all
over the world and ask now thousands of
people about this we’ve come to realize
that about seventy to seventy percent
seventy five percent of the world’s
population will all agree on a specific
correlation and I’d like a show of hands
as I go through the answers 70 percent
of people around the world go with white
for being salty good clear majority 70
percent and that’s maybe because salt is
white so maybe it’s that kind of very
basic and obvious kind of Association
seventy percent of people go with a kind
of blackish-brown for being bitter good
good majority maybe that’s because a lot
of people wake up in the morning and
reach for a cup of coffee tea we think
of dark chocolate burnt chards foods
have a kind of bitterness to them
perhaps 70% of people go with green for
being sour good maybe we’re thinking of
limes and sour sour candy or maybe
there’s even a hypothesis that it could
be a more innate part of our brain that
things are kind of unripe fruits which
leaves us with over 70% of the world’s
population go with red for being sweet
good and maybe that’s again the the kind
of ripe fruit hypothesis or maybe it’s
summer fruits and berries and the fact
that a lot of candy comes in red
packaging well what’s interesting about
this goes beyond just the fact that
there’s an association there if you
correlate this with other research
that’s been done by people like
Professor Charles spent and the Alyssia
foundation they found that if you
present people with the an identical red
strawberry mousse on a white plate
versus on a black plate that people will
perceive the same strawberry mousse on a
white plate to be up to 10% in some
extreme cases up to 30% sweeter so if we
know that red is the color of sweetness
generally and if we know that the color
contrasts of red and the the tone of red
can actually impact our expectation and
perception and satiety when
comes to sweetness well when we’re
thinking of developing children’s
desserts yogurt snacks well maybe this
is something that we could take into
consideration could we reduce the amount
of sugar that we put in these foods by
10% by augmenting the other sensory
products of color contrast and the
degree in tone of redness and the
dessert to give them the same satiety
and pleasure out of eating these foods
with a reduced amount of sugar perhaps
now a lot of people never really think
of audio a sense of hearing as being
important to how we perceive flavor and
taste but I can assure you if I
blindfolded you all here now and snapped
two sticks of celery one giving us nice
sharp crisp crack and the other kind of
dull limp snap which one do you want in
your salad well the one that gives a
kind of nice sharp crisp crack because
even just from what we hear that’s an
indication of freshness that’s an
indication of nutrition and that’s what
we’re looking for
so I’m going to play you two sound
scapes now and as you’re listening to
both of these I’d like you to associate
one of them with our red wine and one of
them with our white wine sound good
let’s go there are only five second
tracks listen to them and just make a
that’s piece number one piece number two
good so that second that latter track
that we heard the deeper kind of cello
white wine no.1 red wine very good but
why why is red wine that deeper kind of
cello and why do most people correlate
the white wine with these kind of higher
pitched notes and tones what’s
interesting his researchers have found
correlations between notes tones and
instruments for sweetness sourness
bitterness saltiness and even umami
again why is this important well perhaps
when designing soundscapes for food
experiences like in children’s dining
halls at schools or in care homes could
we nudge people towards making those
right kind of food choices or could we
enhance the dining experience in some
way to give them a greater degree of
pleasure enjoyment satiety and now the
final example I’d like to give you is
really really important to us all and I
think we all know it’s important but we
don’t know the degree to which it’s
important and that’s how sense of smell
now what’s interesting about this is if
you ask most people around the world if
you had and just think about this now
yourself if you had to lose one of your
basic senses what would it be most
people will say their sense of smell
what’s interesting though in long term
research they’ve found that people who
lose their sense of smell become far
more depressed than those who lose their
sense of sight in the long term because
we underestimate how important smell is
but we’re going to give this a little
test now we each have a jelly bean yes
very good now before I direct you to pop
the jelly bean in your mouth what you
first need to do is we need to all very
graciously clamp our noses now I’m going
to stop clamping my nose because I don’t
sound as good but do keep your nose
clamp and the most important thing about
this little experiment is throughout it
you make sure that you have no
sense of smell coming through you keep
it nice and firmly clamped then I’d like
you to take your jellybeans pop it in
your mouth and chew and as you’re
chewing don’t release keep it there and
but then what you’re thinking now is can
you actually perceive a flavor now what
I’d like to us to do is release amazing
what just happened there well this is
almost that moment where we’ve all had a
cold but in England what we say when we
have a cold is we say oh I can’t taste
the thing you can keep adding sugar to
your coffee it gets sweeter salt to your
steak it gets saltier
but that doesn’t improve the flavor and
that’s because your sense of smell is
inhibited in some way researchers
estimate that up to maybe 80 in some
cases ninety percent of what we perceive
as flavor actually comes from our sense
of smell now taking all this into
consideration and hearing what all the
other speakers here have talked about
today I don’t know if it’s just because
I’m a chef but I noticed that over half
if not 70 to 80% of the people who spoke
here today mentioned food in some
context whether it be our relationship
with food whether it be the emotional
element the social element the the joy
the society the nostalgia that we get
from it and I leave you this kind of
concluding remark which is food is one
of the most important elements we saw
the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs earlier
today we had food we had water we had
air I don’t think many of you have taken
your friends out for a pint of water or
a breath of fresh air but food we need
and food we celebrate with so surely
having a better understanding about the
sensory relationship that we have with
food can help us not only address some
of the
food issues that we have in the world
would also help us with designing more
nutritious more sustainable food systems for the future thank you
my show of hands who here enjoys eating
good now that’s a clear majority of us
but if I were to ask you why well that’s
a little bit more difficult to
articulate but most of us our answers
would come in kind of one of two broad
categories sustenance nutrition and
well-being being one of them and the
other being the more hedonistic sensory
pleasures and satiety that we get from
food
now there’s one characteristic that’s
common to each of these elements and
that is flavor but what is flavor well
this is a question I had just under ten
years ago and it was sparked by a chance
encounter with one professor charles
spence he’s head of the cross-modal lab
at oxford university and as an
experimental psychologist has a keen
interest in understanding how we
perceive flavor but not just using our
chemical senses senses of smell and
touch and taste but how we use all of
our senses now eating without doubt is
one of the most multi-sensory activities
that we as humans engage in on a daily
basis and this research is allowing us
unique insights into understanding the
association’s the perceptions and the
expectations that we have when it comes
to the foods that we eat now since
having met professor spence my team and
I are kitchen Theory have both engaged
in the academic research but as well try
to find ways of taking the research out
of the lab and finding practical
applications for the real world now
before I go any further I’d like to
share one key insight that I’ve had over
these years and rather than leave this
to kind of a concluding note I’d like us
to begin with this idea plant the seed
so the
we can allow ourselves lend our
imaginations towards the possible
innovations in creativity that it holds
and the idea is very very simple and
it’s this flavor is a construct of the
mind rather than just a sensory
perception in the mouth and although we
may localize the perception of flavor
into our mouths
it’s actually all the expectations the
perceptions the judgments and the
enjoyment all reside in the brain which
is being fed with rich sensory
information from each of our senses our
sense of taste touch smell vision audio
all of them paint this rich picture of
flavor now if we take this idea that we
perceive flavor not in the mouth but we
perceive flavor in our brains
well this begs the question how should
we be designing food experiences that
encourage people towards making more
sustainable and more nutritious food
choices and I’m not just talking about
in restaurants but what about in schools
hospitals care homes what I’d like to do
now is just share three very kind of
quick and brief examples and you’re
going to play along with me here I’m
going to share three quick examples of
some of the research and look at some of
the potential applications for this so
here are the colors aren’t so clear but
here you have four edible elements one
is red one is white one is black and one
is green now what I’d like you to do in
your minds is assign each one of these
colors to one of your four basic tastes
so salty bitter sour sweet I’d like you
to assign one of those four to one of
the four colors you have so you have red
white black and green and we’re looking
to assign a basic taste of salty bitter
sour and sweet now there is no right or
wrong answer to this and based on our
background our cultural upbringing and
all the foods we’ve been exposed to are
over
lifetime will all have different
expectations and different answers but
what’s interesting is having gonoro all
over the world and ask now thousands of
people about this we’ve come to realize
that about seventy to seventy percent
seventy five percent of the world’s
population will all agree on a specific
correlation and I’d like a show of hands
as I go through the answers 70 percent
of people around the world go with white
for being salty good clear majority 70
percent and that’s maybe because salt is
white so maybe it’s that kind of very
basic and obvious kind of Association
seventy percent of people go with a kind
of blackish-brown for being bitter good
good majority maybe that’s because a lot
of people wake up in the morning and
reach for a cup of coffee tea we think
of dark chocolate burnt chards foods
have a kind of bitterness to them
perhaps 70% of people go with green for
being sour good maybe we’re thinking of
limes and sour sour candy or maybe
there’s even a hypothesis that it could
be a more innate part of our brain that
things are kind of unripe fruits which
leaves us with over 70% of the world’s
population go with red for being sweet
good and maybe that’s again the the kind
of ripe fruit hypothesis or maybe it’s
summer fruits and berries and the fact
that a lot of candy comes in red
packaging well what’s interesting about
this goes beyond just the fact that
there’s an association there if you
correlate this with other research
that’s been done by people like
Professor Charles spent and the Alyssia
foundation they found that if you
present people with the an identical red
strawberry mousse on a white plate
versus on a black plate that people will
perceive the same strawberry mousse on a
white plate to be up to 10% in some
extreme cases up to 30% sweeter so if we
know that red is the color of sweetness
generally and if we know that the color
contrasts of red and the the tone of red
can actually impact our expectation and
perception and satiety when
comes to sweetness well when we’re
thinking of developing children’s
desserts yogurt snacks well maybe this
is something that we could take into
consideration could we reduce the amount
of sugar that we put in these foods by
10% by augmenting the other sensory
products of color contrast and the
degree in tone of redness and the
dessert to give them the same satiety
and pleasure out of eating these foods
with a reduced amount of sugar perhaps
now a lot of people never really think
of audio a sense of hearing as being
important to how we perceive flavor and
taste but I can assure you if I
blindfolded you all here now and snapped
two sticks of celery one giving us nice
sharp crisp crack and the other kind of
dull limp snap which one do you want in
your salad well the one that gives a
kind of nice sharp crisp crack because
even just from what we hear that’s an
indication of freshness that’s an
indication of nutrition and that’s what
we’re looking for
so I’m going to play you two sound
scapes now and as you’re listening to
both of these I’d like you to associate
one of them with our red wine and one of
them with our white wine sound good
let’s go there are only five second
tracks listen to them and just make a
that’s piece number one piece number two
good so that second that latter track
that we heard the deeper kind of cello
white wine no.1 red wine very good but
why why is red wine that deeper kind of
cello and why do most people correlate
the white wine with these kind of higher
pitched notes and tones what’s
interesting his researchers have found
correlations between notes tones and
instruments for sweetness sourness
bitterness saltiness and even umami
again why is this important well perhaps
when designing soundscapes for food
experiences like in children’s dining
halls at schools or in care homes could
we nudge people towards making those
right kind of food choices or could we
enhance the dining experience in some
way to give them a greater degree of
pleasure enjoyment satiety and now the
final example I’d like to give you is
really really important to us all and I
think we all know it’s important but we
don’t know the degree to which it’s
important and that’s how sense of smell
now what’s interesting about this is if
you ask most people around the world if
you had and just think about this now
yourself if you had to lose one of your
basic senses what would it be most
people will say their sense of smell
what’s interesting though in long term
research they’ve found that people who
lose their sense of smell become far
more depressed than those who lose their
sense of sight in the long term because
we underestimate how important smell is
but we’re going to give this a little
test now we each have a jelly bean yes
very good now before I direct you to pop
the jelly bean in your mouth what you
first need to do is we need to all very
graciously clamp our noses now I’m going
to stop clamping my nose because I don’t
sound as good but do keep your nose
clamp and the most important thing about
this little experiment is throughout it
you make sure that you have no
sense of smell coming through you keep
it nice and firmly clamped then I’d like
you to take your jellybeans pop it in
your mouth and chew and as you’re
chewing don’t release keep it there and
but then what you’re thinking now is can
you actually perceive a flavor now what
I’d like to us to do is release amazing
what just happened there well this is
almost that moment where we’ve all had a
cold but in England what we say when we
have a cold is we say oh I can’t taste
the thing you can keep adding sugar to
your coffee it gets sweeter salt to your
steak it gets saltier
but that doesn’t improve the flavor and
that’s because your sense of smell is
inhibited in some way researchers
estimate that up to maybe 80 in some
cases ninety percent of what we perceive
as flavor actually comes from our sense
of smell now taking all this into
consideration and hearing what all the
other speakers here have talked about
today I don’t know if it’s just because
I’m a chef but I noticed that over half
if not 70 to 80% of the people who spoke
here today mentioned food in some
context whether it be our relationship
with food whether it be the emotional
element the social element the the joy
the society the nostalgia that we get
from it and I leave you this kind of
concluding remark which is food is one
of the most important elements we saw
the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs earlier
today we had food we had water we had
air I don’t think many of you have taken
your friends out for a pint of water or
a breath of fresh air but food we need
and food we celebrate with so surely
having a better understanding about the
sensory relationship that we have with
food can help us not only address some
of the
food issues that we have in the world
would also help us with designing more
nutritious more sustainable food systems for the future thank you
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