The future of food Ask neuroscience
Transcriber: Emma Gon
Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
Golnoosh Mahdavi: As I stand in this room,
I can’t help but feel
a connection to history.
Who lived here?
What were their experiences like?
What noises could be heard?
I have no choice
but to resort to my imagination,
to form my own perception
of what life was like
hundreds of years ago.
We navigate through life
by reflecting our memories,
by reasoning and by making decisions.
It’s these processes that
we classify as our human experience.
An experience which is constantly
built on senses, the ability to see,
the ability to smell
and the ability to touch.
In fact, there are
specific areas of the brain
dedicated to carrying
out these functions.
And this is precisely
where our job plays a role -
understanding these functions through
data collected from the brain itself.
Yet our experience
of the world is subjective,
so personal that these processes
come to us naturally.
We tend to forget the complexity of what
goes on backstage behind closed doors,
the complexity of the subconscious.
Through applied neuroscience,
we begin to get a glimpse into
this very important part of our world
that would otherwise
be completely invisible to us.
Dhyana Menon: But can the brain alone
make the invisible visible?
I’m skeptical.
Neurobiology is
an important piece of the puzzle,
but this lens doesn’t give us
a complete picture of the entire story.
Everyone of us was born into
a unique body, family and culture.
And our experiences are
the product of the dynamic relationship
of all these things, just like wine.
Grapes picked from this vineyard,
12 years ago,
transformed into
a singular bottle of wine.
If we were to study the physical
properties of the wine as it exists today,
we’d miss the most important ingredients
from which this wine came to be,
like the climate, the minerals in the soil
the nearby flowers and trees.
Even the age of the wine barrels
in which these grapes fermented
will affect the way
that the wine will eventually taste.
Grapes grow and transform in unique ways
due to so many different factors.
Just like our brains,
our evolutionary origins,
the families we were born into,
our cultural communities
that we reside in.
All create and contribute to
the complexity of who we are.
Mario Ubiali: And yet there must be a way
to navigate that sea of complexity.
We must find an answer
to all of those questions
that our customers
and partners come to us with.
These complex deep questions about
the relationship between humans and food.
How do you go about finding that answer?
A long time ago, we realized
neuroscience alone wouldn’t be enough.
It’s much like trying to navigate
a never changing landscape
like this one around me now,
a landscape of sand dunes.
You really want to go about that landscape
with a predetermined map.
Something that tells you a trajectory
that is going to be impossible to apply.
Or would you rather go for a direction
and maybe switch to
searching for a compass?
Well, we have searched
and found a compass.
That compass for us is
what we call cultural neuroscience.
We believe with cultural neuroscience,
we can seek those answers
to complex questions.
We can look into
the depth of multilayered factors.
And this is where you need
to put together a series of lenses,
not just one through which
you’re trying to interpret reality.
More, more lenses, one of brain
data, the lens of emotions,
the lens of food, and ultimately,
the lens of culture.
That compass to us is a way to say
we refuse to go down the rabbit hole
of the obsession
for deterministic control.
GM: We all have this deep
seated desire for control.
It stems from our need
to define our answers
and also be in charge of
our personal narrative.
But why is that?
Because our choices and
preferences are often shaped
by reasons we may be unaware of.
But what if I told you
that your brain electrical activity
can tell a completely different story
about your emotions
and your level of attention
compared to your subjective feedback?
And you may be wondering, why is that?
That’s because most of
your choices you’re unaware of.
Many of our impulsive choices
are driven by emotion.
Our habits are formed through repetition.
I often wonder why do I eat what I do?
Growing up in an Indian family,
living in Dubai, studying in the UK,
I’m now working in Italy,
how did it shape my perception of food?
This is why it is worth investigating
the mechanisms which go on
in the minds of individuals
while they’re engaging in experiences,
experiences which are essential to
our survival, like the experience of food.
In our research, we evaluate
the brain’s responses
to certain textures,
flavors and ingredients
providing a holistic vision
of human interaction with food.
DM: Food builds worlds,
our eating habits
are shaped by our cultures,
the places we live, our genetics
and even our beliefs.
Foods are at the beginning
of every civilization
and are the basis of the stories
that we grew up with,
even to this day.
What we eat touches us
in so many different
dimensions of our lives
that is a topic of serious interest in
both the sciences and the humanities.
I personally tried to study food
all throughout my life.
First as a child of my mother,
who’s a brilliant cook of Iranian cuisine,
then as a young neuroscientist
in school studying the effects
of a shared communal meal
on recovery from depression.
And in most recently,
I found myself as a professional cook
in a fine dining Italian kitchen.
If there’s one thing that I’ve noticed
throughout all of my experiences,
it’s that all of
these worlds studying food
in unique ways are making
brilliant discoveries.
And yet I’ve also noticed
that they are almost never
talking to each other.
We are trying to change that.
To understand human experience more fully,
we study food through
the prism of cultural neuroscience,
how our stories and our bodies interact.
We believe that by studying
foods effects on the mind and the brain,
we can begin to bridge the gap between
our personal and societal needs
and bring forth a sustainable future
grounded in a simple truth.
That we all eat to nourish,
flourish, survive and celebrate.
MU: One of my earliest life memories
is a skeleton shed on the night sky
in a cornfield in
the middle of the summer,
a light bulb dangling and me sitting
and eating this huge ripe
watermelon slice.
And then, I very distinctively remember
the silhouette of my father
in front of the fire spit-roasting fog
swirling around trees in the garden.
I can’t help but thinking
how much of those rituals
which were so far beyond the tradition
and were nurtured in celebration
have created who I am today.
So if I were given a choice,
would I give up that identity,
all of those memories, would you?
In this day and age, we’re often told
that food systems need to change
to save the planet around us,
to save us as a species.
But how catastrophic do you think
it would be if there was only one system
that was proposed to us,
one for all humanity,
erasing and throwing away all those
cultural memories across the board?
This is precisely where the notion
of food humanism comes into play.
We believe that there is not going to be
a leap forward without really embracing
the nature of what food means for humans.
So there is no food humanism in the future
without culture and neuroscience.
And culture and neuroscience
is so relevant to this equation,
because it’s the very door that is going
to be unlocking the memory emotionally,
neurologically, biologically and socially
of who we are as humans,
as diverse as we are on all the planet.
And so we believe this is
the time to ask the right questions.
A lot of people are not, we’re trying to.
And we would like to really encourage
all of you out there
to be asking yourself this question.
How will we keep it human?