Your Taste Buds Ambassadors to Nature
[Music]
i’d like to invite you
to think about your favorite food
now this can be a single item
or it can be a whole meal
try to remember the last time you had it
i don’t want you to think about the
environment or the people you’re with
but the food that you are experiencing
now take that bite
what are you tasting
are you getting something sweet
maybe salty
maybe there’s a savory meatiness to it
perhaps there’s even a little hint of
bitter
nothing offensive maybe a spice or an
herb
maybe
it has a citrus garnish
and you squeeze it on your food and
you’ve got this pop of sour
are your salivary glands going
our taste buds
are there
for your pleasure
but they also have purpose
you see i believe that even healthy food
should be out of this world delicious
and yet we find ourselves in a place
where
our sense of taste has kind of lost its
reverence
if you think about it
those taste buds are the only thing that
you were born with
to be able to detect nutrition
so
your sense of taste matters
so much more
than we’re giving it reverence for
now i just walked you through a
flavorful experience and in that
experience
you got to think about the five flavors
we get to experience on our taste buds
salty sweet
sour
bitter and umami
now you’re gonna laugh when i tell you
what my favorite food is
it’s meatloaf
my mom makes the best meatloaf in the
world
and growing up in new jersey
my dad and i were the gardeners
and to this day i still garden
and i’m so lucky because i have really
been able to embrace the food industry
in a lot of different ways
so i’ve worked in restaurants
and i’ve done food manufacturing
and this fascination with food and
flavor
ultimately took me to a culinary school
and it wasn’t just a cooking
school this school is focused on local
and organic
food
and we as students
got to get our hands in the dirt
and link arms with farmers that really
care about their land and their soil
and the food that they’re growing and
raising for that matter
and it was here in culinary school that
i learned
about the five flavors
salty sweet sour bitter and umami i’m
gonna keep saying it
so i not only learned how to make food
taste good
but i also learned that these flavors
have benefits and they have purpose
we live in a world today
where
our taste buds are not really given
enough reverence
our children are growing up thinking
that blue
is a flavor
and we have been conditioned to think
that only sweet and salty things taste
good
but then we get in our heads and we say
well sweet is calories
and salt
is heart it’s concerning for your heart
so all of a sudden we don’t trust our
sense of taste anymore
but the thing is
that there’s an important correlation
here
between flavor and nutrients
and in nature
flavor and nutrients create the perfect
package
the sad thing about not giving reverence
to our sense of taste
is that not only doing ourselves a
disservice
we’re also
allowing kind of confusing combinations
of flavor
so for instance
chocolate flavored protein
do you know that protein has its own
flavor
it’s called umami
and it is delicious
it is that meaty savory anxious flavor
that we get
yes when we eat meat but also when we
eat seeds or nuts
and even kale that higher protein green
has an umami flavor
so these flavors
have purpose
and when we embrace these flavors
in this way
we can learn to trust them more
so for instance in nature let’s think
about an apple
if you think of an apple you’re going to
think of it as sweet
but is it just sweet
when you take that bite
you’re getting sweet
you’re getting sour
you might even be getting a little
saltiness
but it’s wrapped in a bitter package
and that bitter package that protects
the apple
from pests and disease with its
antioxidants and polyphenols
is going to provide the same benefit for
you
so in nature
sweet doesn’t come alone
sweet is always packaged with other
flavors
so
it’s really
powerful if you think about it
you can make choices around flavor
without the guilt
when it comes from nature
so i’m really lucky in that in my
pursuit
of understanding our taste buds better
i get to interview really amazing
experts
i get to talk to chefs and nutritionists
and farmers
regenerative farmers
agronomists and the exciting thing is
that they’re doing the right things with
flavor they are growing flavor into food
instead of manufacturing it and adding
it later
in one usda report that was shared with
me by rod tyler of garden socks did a
comparison report of nutrients of
strawberries grown conventionally versus
strawberries grown
in garden socks which are filled with
just compost
biology rich compost
and they were measuring nutrient density
but the reality is it translates to
flavor really easily
so for instance
it showed higher levels of sucrose
glucose and fructose
you can probably guess that that’s going
to bring you sweetness
but it’s also energy
right
it also showed higher levels of malic
acid and citric acid and these show up
as sour
on our taste buds
and here’s the thing
that you’re going to love
is the antioxidants
were higher
and antioxidants
are bitter
i know you don’t really love that
usually when we think of bitter it’s
offensive and it’s not something that we
feel like we enjoy
but don’t be bitter about
bitter because bitter is where the magic
is
all the medicinal healing properties of
food
show up in bitter flavors
so antioxidants terpenes polyphenols
these are all things that we can embrace
as a bitter flavor
and the best part of it is
we can kind of bring mary poppins into
the picture here when we and if you
think about it a little bit of sweetness
can help the medicine go down
in a world
where
we’re on the precipice of environmental
collapse
think about how empowering it is to use
your own taste buds as an ally for these
regenerative farmers
and imagine
this is cool technology that’s showing
up
there’s devices that you will be able to
take into the grocery store
measured nutrient density
of let’s say a leaf of spinach in the
grocery store
take that device to the farmers market
do a little comparison
look at the nutrient density
take them home
and taste them
all of a sudden
your taste buds are not so superficial
after all
so here we are
often confused about how we can make
changes in the environment
doesn’t it feel completely empowering
that your taste buds
and you
demanding more flavor be grown and
raised into your food
can make a difference
flavor is a
remedy flavor is a remedy for boring
food
flavor is a remedy for your health
flavor is remedy for the planet
what is it that you want to eat and
taste in your food
[Applause]