[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.73 Jala Hello world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her, and today I am joined by returning guest, Mike (he/him). Yay. 00:00:11.89 Michael Prehn Hey, what's up, everybody? You might remember me from the neurodiversity episode. 00:00:13.95 Jala Yeah. 00:00:16.61 Michael Prehn I was the guy who wasn't Jack. 00:00:20.93 Jala Right, right. And you already did my work for me, I was going to say, and you can listen to him on this other episode he was on. So thank you. Yeah. So how are you doing today, Mike? 00:00:34.09 Michael Prehn Doing pretty good. um We talked about it in the green room, we're getting out of hurricane season here in Louisiana, which is a thing that affects me professionally and personally. So I'm really excited for Halloween and Christmas and mostly no nasty storms in the Gulf. So things are things are looking up right now, I think. 00:00:53.77 Jala Right, that is absolutely awesome. So um as for me, I am, ah that's to to give away when we're recording this, I am getting ready to go to do my Spartan Beast event, which is a half marathon obstacle course race. And so um I will be doing that very soon. 00:01:12.95 Jala and yeah so today at work was the last day of work before leaving so very busy very frustrating but i am glad to be here with you my friend talking about the thing we we're talking about today so ah we are busy working in the kitchen or maybe it's the lab or maybe the kitchen is the lab but talking about the science of flavor today. 00:01:24.12 Michael Prehn Thank you. 00:01:35.04 Jala And this is going to be the first episode of a few. I don't know how many. Don't don't quote me on that. But like this is an intro to additional future episodes where we will talk about crafting flavor. 00:01:41.51 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:01:47.01 Jala But today we are talking about the science behind flavor and why you taste things and what's important about that and all different kinds of other stuff that is neat and cool. 00:01:58.04 Jala So, Mike, you have professional um you know designation and interest in this because this is your job as flavor i mean not that specifically like that thing but like you do work in food industry so yes 00:02:14.31 Michael Prehn Yep, that's correct. So just for the listeners who may not know me, um I work professionally as a research and development chef. And if you haven't heard of that particular kind of career, ah basically we're the people that companies hire to develop specific recipes or products for them. So you have ah companies like Tyson or Kraft, General Mills that come to people and say, hey, we want to make a blueberry flavored breakfast cereal that shelf stable and has these flavor notes and costs this much. And then we get into the lab slash kitchen and we try to make something that meets all those criteria. 00:02:53.24 Michael Prehn um I've got a background in a restaurant food service, about 20 years all told. So I have worked every position in a kitchen ah all the way up to the lab and everything in between. So a lot of time ah working on flavors and thinking about them. I'm not as familiar with the ah human science of flavor, so I'm really interested to talk about it today. 00:03:19.00 Jala I am a professional food enjoyer. That's my designation. 00:03:23.63 Michael Prehn Yep. I mean, me tooo too. 00:03:25.62 Jala and that's That's pretty much everybody else I think that is listening to this show. 00:03:26.11 Michael Prehn Me too. 00:03:30.08 Jala so We will all be in the vote together. I am also the the researcher person who goes and reads lots of things and makes lots and lots, in this case, 16 pages worth of notes to talk about for this show. 00:03:43.84 Jala so um yeah that's that's my my extent of my proof I do a lot of cooking at home. I cook everything from scratch myself, and so I am constantly combining stuff and making you know new dishes and new recipes and things for myself, but I do not have any kind of professional capacity. It is all layman. so ah In either case, Mike, you don't have anything else that you do on the internet. We covered this last time, so ah you can enjoy listening to this episode and the neurodiversity episode. and As Mike continues to show up on this show, you can listen to any of his backlog. 00:04:21.12 Jala so That'll be your shout out for at the top of the app. As for me, 00:04:26.68 Michael Prehn your number one source for mic print content on the internet right here. 00:04:29.47 Jala Right. Right. That's right. Absolutely. But some as for Jala-chan's Place, you can find us on ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia, where you can kick us a few bucks to keep the lights on and keep me researching stuff to talk about on the show. I do a lot of work and um I do it just for the funsies. And because I love to present this stuff to folks and get people thinking about new subjects that maybe they hadn't thought about before, 00:04:59.19 Jala ah But anything that you kick into the pot on the Ko-fi will help with general expenses related to the production of this show, so it is very much appreciated. There are ah extra shows, bonus content, and stuff like that, reviews, things like that. You can check that out. Again, that is KO-FI.com/fireheartmedia. 00:05:22.35 Jala Now, I'm excited to talk about this topic, so I'm going to kick it off by talking about what is flavor. So the best way to think about flavor is that is the sum of all the sensations we get when we have food in the mouth. That leads to some surprising discoveries. The weight of a bowl, the color of a plate, the crunch of a potato chip, and even the choice of background music can have a direct effect on how we perceive flavor. 00:05:52.44 Jala perceptual scientists can make a strong argument that a food's flavor isn't really contained in the food at all. Instead, you construct flavor in your mind from the whole range of senses you experience with each bite. And we will talk about that a little bit later when we talk about some of the kind of interesting um stuff that folks out there in the food world are doing when they're really kind of more like food artists. So, yeah, Mike, what do you think about this definition? 00:06:23.48 Michael Prehn You know, it is interesting because ah flavor and taste tend to be interchangeable, especially in ah certain languages and cultures around the world. But they are not really the same thing because taste, generally speaking, refers to like the actual sensation of eating something. But flavor is but really more of a whole picture thing, like you mentioned. 00:06:47.04 Michael Prehn And there's a surprising amount of stuff that goes into it, things that you wouldn't think have any influence on flavor. um Part of my work is doing focus group testing for things. And there are some information that come out of those focus groups that are just really baffling sometimes. 00:07:04.84 Jala Right. I'm sure we're going to end up hearing about that as we go through and talk about the whole like experience of it. And something else I want to talk about when we're talking about just the word choices and stuff. 00:07:12.59 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:07:16.63 Jala um Something that, so so most of the information for this episode, I am pulling from one specific book called Flavor, the Science of our Most Neglected Sense by Bob Holmes. 00:07:28.19 Jala I will put a link to that in the show notes. So folks can take a look at that book. It is very comprehensive and good. I have read several books on this topic leading up to this episode as usual, but this is the absolute hands down best one talking about this specific subject. So um talking about the word choices that we use, and this is a whole section of notes later that we'll get into, but um people usually use taste to mean, you know, not tasting like the perception of the food on the tongue, but actually something that is more related to their other senses, like their sense of smell is primarily the way that we, quote unquote, taste a food. And we'll get into all of the nitty gritty on that a little bit later. 00:08:11.59 Jala But ah something that I found interesting was some of the stuff that was pointed out in the book regarding two spices and where spicy foods originate from and why that's actually kind of interesting, like how it developed that we started to spice things. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Mike? 00:08:31.00 Michael Prehn Yeah, so obviously it's common knowledge that you know certain cultures have spicier foods. Just for background, if y'all aren't familiar, both me and Jala are from the United States, ah which is one of the perhaps less spiced cultures that are out there, more so now that it's kind of a global food culture. But a lot of ah climates that are more temperate or tropical ah tend to favor spicier or more heavily spiced foods. 00:08:59.97 Michael Prehn And some of that is because a lot of these spices actually have antibacterial properties. So things like ah garlic, onions, oregano, quite a lot of herbs actually will kill most bacteria. This is where the old folklore um legend came from, where if you cut an onion in half and put it on your bedside table, it will ward off sickness. That's where that comes from, because onions actually kill bacteria. 00:09:26.52 Michael Prehn So when you have a warmer climate where food is more likely to spoil more quickly, ah that's why people kind of intuitively gravitated towards a more spiced ah food. 00:09:39.01 Jala Right, right. And it's interesting because you know like all of those places, all those warmer climates, think about where those are. This is Thai Thailand and India and Mexico and all of the, you know, South America and all of that. 00:09:50.22 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:09:54.19 Jala um And then in contrast, the places that don't really have so much spice in their food is stuff like Scandinavia, and Northern Europe, you know, like those are cooler climates where the stuff doesn't go bad as much. But also I would say, like, I don't know what all grows up there all the time, but like at certain times of year when it's winter and everything is snowed in, they're probably not, you know, getting some fresh herbs. You know what I mean? you like They also have a limited availability of what's there. um But it is interesting that you know this was like used for food preservation. It was a survival mechanism to put this stuff in our food in the first place. So ah interesting and cool fact. We are also the only known type of creature that will spice food, like put stuff on food to give it a flavor. Part of that is our anatomy. We will talk about that a little bit later. 00:10:52.58 Jala So ah yeah, when it comes to the brain, it's interesting that when odor information, which is the most important component of flavor, enters the brain, it goes into the ancient parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. 00:11:07.68 Jala So it doesn't reach the conscious logical part of the cerebral cortex until several stops later. So, uh, flavor has this capacity to really like provide emotion to us. A taste of a favorite childhood food or something can transport port us back to, you know, like a time long, long ago, you know, like if there was like a candy or something that you had all the time when you were at your grandmother's house or whatever, like, 00:11:35.69 Jala Having that taste or smelling that smell will bring you back to that place ah in a way that nothing else can. Like a song or a photo doesn't have that same pull if you think about it as that smell or you know the taste of that thing when you put it in your mouth. 00:11:45.76 Michael Prehn Okay, thank you. 00:11:53.72 Jala so ah That might also explain why immigrants always hold on to the flavors of their native country long after they've adopted a new culture. so For example, both you and I, Mike, are also half Cuban. 00:12:06.55 Michael Prehn Mm-hm. Yep. 00:12:08.95 Jala My dad, when I was growing up, we had Cuban food almost exclusively. like you know We had some American stuff too. But most of what I ate growing up was just Cuban food because he insisted we eat Cuban food all the time. So we very, very rarely had anything but Cuban food. So, um you know, this this kind of way of thinking about the food is, you know, like this is the thing that binds a lot of people together. And we already know this. Like when we have holidays and stuff, we bring a large group of people together around a table to eat food. You know, it binds ethnic groups together. 00:12:44.76 Jala across generations and oceans and national boundaries. and you know It's a a marker of your culture. you know like The fact that I ate this Cuban food growing up, you know ah I remember very distinctly when I was at work one day, and this is long before I was vegan. but So, ah bear this in mind. I had ah pork roast, which is a very Cuban meal to have. And somebody else came in and was like, oh, what are you eating? That smells good. And I was like, it's pork roast. And they're like, pot roast? And I'm like, no, pork roast. And they were like, what? And I had to explain because i i it made me do a double take because since I'm a white passing 00:13:24.00 Jala You know, this, this person did not know that I was Cuban. And so they were like, I do not understand the words you just put together. And then I told them I'm Cuban. And they're like, Oh, okay. 00:13:34.36 Jala I get it now. You know, ah Oh, she's an ethnic. 00:13:37.15 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's a Yeah, never mind. 00:13:38.19 Jala you know Right. 00:13:40.42 Michael Prehn We got to change some things. ah No, ah I've had a very similar experience myself because, you know, when you're young, you grow up eating the stuff that your parents eat and ah you don't think about the fact that the world at large may not be familiar with those. 00:13:42.22 Jala Right. 00:13:50.68 Jala Mm hmm. 00:13:56.84 Michael Prehn And so food is something that um connects people for sure, but also becomes an actual identifier in society as well. thinking about people who are affluent eating caviar and things like that. 00:14:10.24 Jala Well, and then too, if you are invited to someone's house and that person has an ethnicity that you do not share with them, and then they have you come to eat dinner, and if say it's with their family, like say this is a friend of yours, and you know, you're a young person, and you go to this friend's house to have some food, like say for me, if it was like a Korean person or something, you know, and um then I sat down to the meal, you know, like everybody in the room would be like watching to see what the Cuban girl was gonna do, you know, like, 00:14:40.14 Jala because like that that um yeah accepting of the food that you are given and everything is like a ah kind of rite of passage for anybody who wants to be accepted by that group. you know um And that's like ah that's a big thing. 00:14:50.47 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. Absolutely. 00:14:52.62 Jala And so like me as a vegan, like that turns into a thing, right? Or it used to turn into a big thing um because you know I wouldn't be as accepted because I had this difference of what I was eating. 00:15:05.08 Jala And that's a thing that's very sensitive for a lot of people because of this this deep tie, this emotional tie that we have to what we eat. so So moving right along, let's talk about sense of smell, the most important part of flavor. The bulk of our sense of taste actually comes from smell, particularly retronasal olfaction. So what is retronasal olfaction? 00:15:31.59 Jala Well, first let's talk about orthonasal olfaction. So ah sniffing something out in the world, the smell of rain or flowers or baking bread as you walk past the panaderia, that is orthonasal olfaction. This is our preliminary taste of a thing. So um This sets up our expectation of the thing that we will eat. This is just the the smell that you get at the tip of your nose when you stick your nose up to a flower or when you're just walking around in the world. 00:16:03.89 Jala And um this can set up your expectation of the flavor, but sometimes it's misleading. So for example, I have never eaten durian, but durian supposedly smells very bad to people when they smell it, you know, just with their orthonasal olfaction just sitting in the world. 00:16:21.72 Jala But then when they eat it, a lot of people say, oh, my God, this tastes amazing. And so like that, that initial scent that you get isn't necessarily indicative of what, you you know, what your experience of that flavor is going to be ah because it's just like that preliminary catching some top notes kind of thing, if you will. 00:16:43.00 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's right. And you know it's a big part of the reason why when you're feeling under the weather, ah you can't really taste things as effectively. It's because that smell element is actually a very big part of flavor and taste. 00:16:57.91 Jala Right. And so like when I had COVID really, really bad, I lost my sense of taste for a while because it wasn't just because like when, depending upon the degree of sickness, you can be stuffed up and then you don't really have orthonasal olfaction. 00:17:03.64 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 00:17:11.71 Jala So you don't get that preliminary sense of smell, but then you do have the retronasal olfaction, which we'll talk about in a second. But when I had the COVID so bad, I didn't have any of that and it was horrible. 00:17:25.09 Jala So the second whiff that you catch is actually at the back of the throat after you eat or drink something. 00:17:25.22 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:17:31.81 Jala That's the retro nasal olfaction where the smell goes through the back door, if you will. It goes up through your nasal cavity, like through your mouth into your nose from behind. 00:17:43.41 Jala So as we exhale, some of the odor compounds from the food or drink rise up into the back of the throat and into the nasal cavity. So the shape of our throat actually helps to push food odors into the nasal cavity as we exhale. So that's a very cool and interesting thing. um Humans are actually uniquely good at smelling things retro nasally. That's what our anatomy is designed for, in fact, because we have this really vertical face. So if you think about a dog, 00:18:14.48 Jala And a dog has a long snoot and it's very good at orthonasal olfaction and can follow a scent ah really easily because it's got that nose way out in front of its face and it can it can you know so catch the whiff of something ah so easily that way. 00:18:17.70 Michael Prehn Thank you. 00:18:32.96 Jala but the back of its throat, its it's the design of it's, it's snout is such that like, it's not going to go into the nasal cavity. The nasal cavity is all the way at the front of the nose. You know, like that's, it's, it's not as designed. So like that they don't get, get like their, their taste is mostly in their initial scent. And then they just chomp on the thing and they get some taste off of their tongue, but then they don't get that retro nasal olfaction that we do that second tasting that we get. So. 00:19:03.60 Michael Prehn And that is likely a big part of the reason why the human experiences focus a lot on food is because we are kind of evolutionarily designed to appreciate food even after we eat it. 00:19:15.62 Michael Prehn ah Tying it back to my work and my experience with that. um Sometimes you'll get lab notes about a particular item that we're trying to recreate. And the only difference between the regular breakfast cereal, it's always breakfast cereal with me, ah the regular breakfast cereal and the ah blueberry one, there's actually no ah compositional or flavor difference, but there is a scent difference to it. And that's enough for people to pick up on. 00:19:44.29 Michael Prehn which is interesting that it's not actually made in a different way other than adding something with an aromatic compound to it. 00:19:51.19 Jala Right, right. And we'll dig into a little bit on those aromatic compounds and stuff a bit later when it comes to artificial flavor. um Because some of that stuff is really interesting, but there's other stuff a little bit more interesting first. 00:20:06.19 Michael Prehn Sure. 00:20:06.88 Jala So yeah, ah do you want to talk to us about working odor receptors and which ones are and are not working and how many we have and all that other fun stuff about genetics? 00:20:18.19 Michael Prehn sure So according to our source material here, the human genome has about 350 working odor receptors. ah But gene sequencers have gone in and looked at the genome and found ah that some people have as many as 413 in about 5% of the population. And they did a pretty ah brief study on this, um but no doubt would probably find people with even more than that. so There's a lot of variation in the odor receptors that we have as humans and even between individual humans. ah The odor receptors I have aren't going to be the same as the ones that Jala have. ah So that's part of the reason why something that I might absolutely love as food um is not going to be palatable to somebody else. It's a ah very personal thing, just like everything to do with flavor. 00:21:13.06 Jala Absolutely. Yeah. And there's like, um just between individuals, like between Mike and I, there's a 30% difference in our odor receptors. So that's really interesting and cool. But ah some of our odor receptors don't even detect odors, which is kind of interesting. 00:21:31.23 Jala And if you take a step back and look at the big picture, odor receptors are really there to alert the body when they recognize a particular small molecule in the environment. So, um you you know, some odor receptors will pick up on other types of things and and that's kind of covered a little bit more. 00:21:48.49 Jala in depth later as well. so like um that When they were trying to go through and match, okay, what scent triggers what which of these odor receptors, because you know somebody was trying to figure this out, like which odor receptor smells what? 00:22:04.54 Jala they found that there were like a whole bunch of orphans that didn't have like a matching corresponding scent. And they're like, I don't know, man, like what would they, they're not responding to a smell. 00:22:17.14 Jala And that's because like, again, they, they are actually, they're doing more than just that. 00:22:18.73 Michael Prehn Mm 00:22:22.16 Jala They will pick up on different qualities and that includes qualities in your food. 00:22:22.91 Michael Prehn hmm. 00:22:26.71 Jala So um what's interesting is that our sense of smell is considered a synthetic sense. So our brains assemble the component parts into a single unified perception and we can't easily pick out the parts separately. 00:22:40.55 Jala so um It's a thing where somebody did a test where um they blindfolded their wife and were like, okay, I'm just going to give you a whiff of this and pulled like some peanut butter that she eats every morning out of the fridge and whiffs it under her nose and she couldn't figure out what it was because like she' you know like her brain not having the information of sight you know and and knowing like the touch of the the jar that was pulled out and everything like that. She was having trouble placing what the scent was, even though it was a very familiar scent to her because she had peanut butter every morning. And it's wild that way. um But like that's that's a thing that you can actually test and have somebody do and be like, OK, here's a bunch of scents. Which of these do you recognize? you know And you can find that you're you're not as on it as you might think that you are with identifying those scents. 00:23:40.32 Michael Prehn Yeah, the sense of smell in humans is interesting because it's very powerful, um for sure, even compared to other animals. 00:23:48.13 Jala Mm hmm. 00:23:48.57 Michael Prehn A lot of lab testing talking about our sense of smell places us as higher than rats and dogs and a lot of tests. But human beings are, for whatever reason, very hard up to explain what exactly those smells are in a vacuum. So that's why a lot of the way that we describe smells is experiential, like, oh, this smells like chocolate. This smells like peanut butter, whatever the case may be. But in terms of breaking it down further than that or identifying it without additional information, well, that's kind of tricky. A lot of the time we kind of smell what we expect to smell, you know, 00:24:27.90 Jala Right, right. And something else that's interesting is that neuroscience also likes to refer to this syn synthesis of odor as an odor object. So basically everything that you smell has its own unique pattern of activation of the odor receptors. And there's like a subset of different ones in your nose that that picks up on each of these unique combinations of things. 00:24:56.30 Jala So, some of them don't even respond unless there's like a certain pattern involved in those those you know um odors that are coming in together at one time. 00:25:08.64 Jala so that's 00:25:09.04 Michael Prehn Yeah, if you if you snuck into a dank old sewer and you smell vanilla and a vacuum vacuum, you probably wouldn't even notice it immediately ah just because it's not something you really expect. 00:25:22.05 Jala Right, right. And even if you did, like, it would be hard for you to trace and parse where that is exactly too. And like, you know, all of that stuff. 00:25:30.07 Michael Prehn Right. 00:25:32.12 Jala So yeah, but like when it comes to rats, we are better than rats for 31 out of 41 chemicals that were tested at detecting those with our nose. 00:25:42.46 Jala And then for humans versus dogs, we were better than dogs at five out of 15. So um that's still a good portion. So, you know, like the the concept that, oh, humans don't have a really good sense of smell is wrong. We do have a sensitive snoot, but ah we have a very, like a brain that wants to coalesce all of that information. It's kind of like a magic eye puzzles and stuff like that. Those work on us the way that they do because eyes are also another, like vision is another, synthesis you know, synthetic um sense. 00:26:19.72 Jala So it likes to coalesce everything together into you know like this one unified vision. And again, ah kind of seeing what we're expecting to see kind of thing. 00:26:31.10 Jala um And then like the the magic eyes do like a trick where like they make your eyes physically do a thing because they they know how eyes work and you know they mess with that. 00:26:38.00 Michael Prehn I'm sorry. 00:26:40.76 Jala And so that's why magic eyes are surprising and interesting and cool and things like that. but um 00:26:46.91 Michael Prehn Yeah, having having synthetic senses is a consequence of having a sentient mind, right? like We're looking for patterns where they may not actually exist, and there's a lot of weirdness that comes out of that. 00:26:53.23 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:26:58.88 Jala Mother Teresa in my toast or whatever. Yeah. 00:27:02.34 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm, yeah. 00:27:02.92 Jala So, and but yeah, looking looking for animals in the clouds and things. So yeah, ah but going back to the scent though, ah there was an interesting Experiment that was done at uc berkeley in the early 2000s where there was a blindfolded ear plugged guy In coveralls and knee pads and heavy gloves crawling around on the lawn just running around and ah He was doing this because there was a chocolate soaked string that had dropped a scent trail and he was there to test his sense of smell to see if he could figure out where the chocolate soaked string was and you know like follow the scent. 00:27:46.92 Jala So um that's interesting, but for that tracking experiment, there were 32 people and 21 people could find and follow the chocolate track by nose alone with all of their other senses blocked off. 00:27:59.89 Michael Prehn I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 00:28:00.59 Jala So that is a pretty high percentage of people being able to follow that scent trail. um So yeah, but when the trackers tried again with with a nose clip on, of course they all failed completely because it wasn't any other kind of clue that was leading them to the chocolate. 00:28:19.79 Jala It was the sense of smell that was doing that. So um pretty interesting stuff. like I don't know that I would want to participate in that experiment, but it sounds like a riot to watch. 00:28:30.54 Jala And 00:28:30.78 Michael Prehn Yeah, I was going to say my first thought if I just showed up as a freshman at Berkeley and I saw this is like this school is too freaky for me. I don't have the kind of I don't know what kind of weird kink that these people are getting into, but it is above my pay grade. 00:28:46.27 Jala they They are out here in broad daylight like this. 00:28:46.29 Michael Prehn I'm out. 00:28:49.87 Jala I thought they were in the S and&M dungeon. I don't know what's going on. so 00:28:55.32 Michael Prehn But ah joking aside, like 21 out of 32 people, that's a pretty good record for something that you obviously you've never done before in your life. Like these are not trained professionals that like do this on purpose. ah If you had asked what my numbers were on that experiment before actually reading about it, I probably would have placed it a lot lower. 00:29:16.31 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. and the The thing about it though, the reason why humans cannot just you know be their own so you know tracking dogs or anything is because we are just our noses are not built to be stuck out there and our our posture is not such that makes that easy. right like Crawling around on the ground with your your your nose your human nose in the dirt trying to figure out where the smell is, is a lot more difficult for us than it is for a dog. 00:29:40.88 Jala so So ah that is why you will not probably find scent humans anytime soon. 00:29:48.41 Michael Prehn Right. 00:29:48.60 Jala So, but yeah. um So yeah, let's move on to the sense of taste. Mike, talk a little bit about this. 00:29:57.31 Michael Prehn ah So it's a bit of a tautology, but tasting happens when the thing we taste, the taste ant, it's called, ah binds to receptors on the taste cells on the tongue or palate. um So ah we all know the names of these. They're generally accepted names, sweet, sour, ah umami, things like that. Whenever we ingest things and it touches our palate or our tongue, we have tiny nerve cells on those that respond to particular taste ants. food. um Good tastes such as umami and sweet are recognized by a single receptor which is a two-part protein ah that's woven into the outer membrane of the ah taste cells. Bad bitter taste on the other hand is um sensed by like a huge constellation of receptors that are kind of lumped in as being called 00:30:51.54 Michael Prehn T2R receptors. um Bitter receptors have kind of come and gone over the course of human evolution from what we can tell in history. um That's part of the whole um perception ah framework in the human mind that is kind of present in some people and maybe a little bit different in others is that ah This is an evolutionary force. We are responding to our environment, which is very different than it was in and the ah dawn of humanity and coming forward. 00:31:24.45 Jala Right. And the thing about it is that the human genome has a bunch of broken, bitter receptors in it. So everybody's got broken, bitter, you know, broken taste receptors in them, in their genome somewhere. 00:31:30.43 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:31:37.61 Jala um And which ones are on and which ones are off vary for different people. So there are things that certain people can taste that other people just can't taste because they don't have that receptor. 00:31:49.20 Jala So, you know, like it's not active in their particular genome. So you know like that that whole, oh, I don't know what's wrong with you. This tastes great. Well, it may taste great to you, but depending upon the other person and what their sensitivities are, like how how strong their sense of taste is and what kinds of tastes they grew up with, it could be very different for them. It's a completely different experience. 00:32:14.28 Jala so 00:32:15.72 Michael Prehn Absolutely. And ah you know, this is why taste is very personal thing. Like I probably have less bitter receptors than the average person because I'm that sicko that goes to a bar and orders in a Negroni, which if you've never had one is one of the bitterest drinks that you can get. And a lot of people think I'm a little bit weird for ordering it, but I actually really enjoy it. And part of that could be because I just simply have less bitter receptors. So I'm not as sensitive to it as a lot of other people. 00:32:45.43 Jala Well, and then just because you taste it and you taste bitter doesn't necessarily mean that you hate it because ah humans can learn to like things. 00:32:53.52 Michael Prehn Right 00:32:56.40 Jala And so like, say, for example, the first time I had coffee, I didn't like it. Like I like the smell of coffee and it's it's actually a scientific fact. ah Like basically everybody likes the smell of coffee. What they don't like is the taste of coffee. 00:33:08.97 Jala You know, ah like the smell is beautiful. 00:33:09.53 Michael Prehn right 00:33:11.19 Jala But when they actually taste it and then they get that bitterness, a lot of people just don't handle that so well. But what happens is over time, as you keep being exposed to that, you start to associate that bitter taste, that specific taste, that, that you know, the component that, you know, like you keep getting every time you get this coffee oh ends up being linked to, oh, but I get the caffeine. 00:33:36.53 Jala And so like I'm a more alert and I have all these benefits. And so then it becomes a positive, it's a positive reinforcement. And then you've got that Pavlovian and effect of like, now I like the coffee actually. I've learned to appreciate the taste of the coffee because, you know, and over time you get used to it and then you end up liking it. and all of that. And that's not everybody's case. you know Everybody finds their own thing that that ends up being the case with. Or they tend to be super picky eaters that only have certain things that they're ever going to you know ah eat or drink. But that's like all part and parcel of it. 00:34:14.69 Jala um you know you might actually taste the Negroni, but you might associate that with just the relaxation that comes with having alcohol, or the fringe that you hang out with when you're drinking that alcohol, or whatever, and then like that becomes associated with positive things, and then like you like it, and and you kind of go from there. 00:34:24.86 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:34:37.48 Jala um It's kind of like when I first drank beer, I was like, I don't really like beer. you know um And I just kept tasting beer over and over again. 00:34:43.11 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:34:45.26 Jala And every single time um whoever I was with had a beer, I'm like, can I have a taste? And I just wanted a taste. And I'm like, that's terrible. That's terrible. That's terrible. And then one day I'm like, oh, this one's not half bad. 00:34:56.46 Jala And it took me like two hours to drink it. But I got over that. And then now I can drink beer. So I mean, you know. 00:35:02.23 Michael Prehn Sure. Yeah, so for for me, I think that the primary sense memory with that bitter flavor is coming up in the restaurants. My first restaurant job was actually as a bartender, initially, even though I went to school for culinary arts, but I was doing what I could to make a buck. 00:35:20.58 Michael Prehn And the place that I worked was always very busy, right? So typically the way that it went is I'd fix a cup of coffee and then some orders would come in and then more orders would come in. I wouldn't actually get to a cup of coffee until much later in the night. But whenever I did, 00:35:36.83 Michael Prehn drink that cup of coffee for closing time to give me the ah late night bursts of energy. um It was usually accompanied with my meal for the day from the kitchen. So it's quite possible that the reason why I don't bulk as much at bitter foods is because I have it associated with like eating a delicious plate of food to go with that. So it could be where some of that comes from. It's as much a genetic thing as it is a experiential thing. 00:36:03.92 Jala Oh, yeah, for sure. And there are like again, like there are for some people, it's more of a hurdle than for others. We'll just put it that way. 00:36:10.80 Michael Prehn Right. 00:36:11.67 Jala So um circling back to taste, though, our sense of taste is what is called analytic. So instead of a synthetic sense like the sense of smell, a taste is an analytic sense. 00:36:25.11 Jala That means that we can easily break it down into its component parts. So sweet and sour pork is sweet and sour to us. Soy sauce is salty and umami. Ketchup is sweet, sour, salty and umami and you can pick up those different tastes from just having it on your tongue and having it in your mouth and chewing it and swallowing it and whatever you're doing. 00:36:48.55 Jala or same thing with the drink. You can also parse the differences of the flavors in the drink, but you can't necessarily smell it. And this is something that I find to be very true when it comes to trying to parse what kind of spices are in of of a particular dish. 00:37:03.80 Jala Like I can smell it and sometimes if it's enough, if it's pronounced enough, I can be like, okay, yeah, it's got whatever, you know, fenugreek in it or something. 00:37:10.73 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:37:12.70 Jala But like most of the time it's when I put it in my mouth and I'm chewing it and swallowing it and everything that I'm like, okay, yeah, I definitely taste X, Y and Z and I can pick up what's in it. 00:37:24.21 Jala after I put it in my mouth and chew and taste it versus like with my nose you know just sniffing the thing, I can't parse necessarily what's in that spice mix as much. like I can pick up some notes, but not all of them. I get much more of those when I put it in my mouth. 00:37:40.26 Michael Prehn Yeah, and this is part of the reason why people are typically much more verbose whenever they're describing food in terms of taste versus smell, even though we know that smell is a very important part of it. um Generally, people can't really break down senses of smell into component parts, but they can do it easily with taste. 00:37:59.21 Michael Prehn And I think a lot of that is probably because it's important to frame these senses as something that was tied to survival once upon a time. You know, taste is functional in the early days of hunter-gatherers, like you're trying food and you need to be able to tell whether or not ah it's going to be poisonous. um So that's part of the reason why we evolved these highly attuned senses that we have regarding smell and taste. 00:38:25.35 Jala Well, and then, too, when you have it in your mouth and you're tasting it with your tongue, you're also getting that retro nasal olfaction. So you're smelling it by that air wafting up into your nasal cavity you know with the stuff that you've got. 00:38:33.27 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:38:39.45 Jala So even though your nose, you know, your scent is this synthetic sense, you are getting secondary information to kind of back up whatever it is that you're tasting on your tongue. 00:38:50.58 Jala So, um you know, in that way, 00:38:51.17 Michael Prehn right 00:38:53.60 Jala your sense of taste with your tongue and your olfactory sense are both working in unison to get that information out for you. so ah Moving on to talking about like the genetic part of this. 00:39:03.93 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:39:07.30 Jala so There's three groups of tasters talking about like broad swaths. so and This is all with regard to a specific bitter taste that um like There's a taste test, we'll we'll get there. and If you can taste it, that means that you're probably a super taste or ah you're a taster or if it's really, really bitter to you in a very strong flavor, then you are probably a super taster. so You've got three groups, super tasters, tasters, and non-tasters for this one particular type of bitter that is fairly well common. 00:39:40.38 Jala So you can kind of figure out whether you're a super taster or what kind of a taster you are by a couple of different methods. One of which is that aforementioned super taster test. I will put a link in the show notes to one such test. There are so many out there. It's basically they have these chemicals on a piece of paper and you put it on your tongue and then you see whether or not you taste anything off of that piece of paper. And there's also ah in the set that I have in the show notes, it is a set that also has a control paper so that you can randomize it. So that way you don't expect something because again, there's that whole if you expect it, you're going to taste something. 00:40:22.59 Michael Prehn Yeah, synthetic senses. 00:40:22.83 Jala So, right, so keep that in mind. the other The other version of this is actually really, really fun. ah You can take a drop of blue food coloring and put it on your tongue, and then you spit out the rest of the blue food coloring, because there's going to be a lot more than you really need for this, and then rinse your mouth out several times with water, ah do that kind of thing, spit several times until you get a lot of the blue out. And then if you stick your tongue out, you can see on your tongue these little islands of pink, little pink round bits. So what those things are, are fungiform papillae. And the more of those that you have, the more sensitive your sense of taste is because those house your taste receptors. So you will find them anywhere on the tongue, mostly in the front and the back, but also it can be on the sides or the middle like 00:41:12.53 Jala ah Dave and I did this, and Dave has most of his on the sides of his tongue, but I have them, I don't really have them on the sides of my tongue. I have them a whole bunch on the back and a whole bunch on the front and like a couple here and there in the middle. 00:41:25.74 Jala So um that's kind of interesting. 00:41:26.32 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:41:28.41 Jala But yeah, these actually bear the taste receptors. So this is technically your taste buds. And um that of course is what responds to the food that you eat to makes you taste the thing. 00:41:40.27 Jala So yeah. 00:41:41.69 Michael Prehn Right. 00:41:41.77 Jala ah 00:41:42.40 Michael Prehn And the um the different clusters of the fun form papillae are the reason why we had that old now outdated model of taste buds where you had certain tastes sequestered to certain parts of the tongue. 00:41:55.79 Michael Prehn um I forget how it was supposed to go exactly, but they would kind of do these diagrams. They would say like, these these are your sweet. receptors, and these are your sour. ah Modern research has kind of shown that that's not really how ah the body picks up on flavors, but it is how we perceive them again because it's a synthetic taste. In reality, every region of your tongue has a mix of all of these. 00:42:21.21 Jala Right, right. So, um yeah, and we already kind of talked about it that what you taste isn't always what you like. So, you know, you can have these ah positive associations with something that maybe doesn't necessarily taste the best to you, but then it gets better over time, you know. 00:42:39.30 Jala So ah just something to keep in mind. So like if you are trying to teach yourself how to ah like a food, you need to associate that food ah via like other stuff around you. you know like give Get a benefit out of that food some way, shape, or form that you can have a positive association. like I don't care how many how much I know that grapefruit is good for me. 00:43:02.39 Jala I am not going to like the grapefruit because I don't like the taste of grapefruit. So if I really want to learn how to like grapefruit, I need to eat grapefruit and have like a special kind of ritual where I'm associating with somebody like, you know, I'm hanging out with somebody and eating our terrible grapefruit together or something and making a memory and then it'll be good, you know, but like it has to be over time. 00:43:16.35 Michael Prehn Hmm. 00:43:22.75 Jala You have to have a repeated exposure, and all of that kind of stuff before you can get there. So, yeah. 00:43:28.30 Michael Prehn Right, sure. 00:43:29.73 Jala ah When you get to bitterness, so when you compare, say, the bitterness of a hoppy ale to that of a coffee, you're not comparing just the output of the particular bitter receptors. Instead, you're really comparing the whole flavor profile of the two bitter drinks. So even if you hold your nose while drinking, then the two are going to taste in and or taste different to you anyway, just because there's differences like sweetness and sourness in each of those beverages. 00:43:57.89 Jala So, um bitterness therefore is a very complex kind of taste that we have. so um Let's say, for example, this one researcher is like, yeah, I i like a good IPA, but i don't stand I can't stand grapefruit because I think it's really bitter. and it's you know He suspects that it's because there's different types of bitter, like a bunch of different types of bitter actually. and um That would kind of be reinforced by how many bitter receptors we have in our genome that don't work. 00:44:31.95 Jala you know like 00:44:32.49 Michael Prehn Right. 00:44:33.01 Jala um It makes sense it would track if that is the case science has not ah confirmed it but that is a thing and also what's interesting is that we even have bitter receptors taste taste receptors okay that taste bitter in our respiratory passages of all places. 00:44:50.55 Jala And why? Because one of the chemicals that bacteria use to communicate with one another has a bitter taste. So if you have a receptor that so gets this bitter sense to you that it's in your sinuses and in your bronchial passages and stuff, it's alerting us that, you know, it's it's alerting us that, hey, there might be bacteria. This might be a time for our immune system to function and fight back. So um That's really interesting. And something else that's interesting is that that bitter receptor that picks up on that bacterial bitterness is the same receptor that also determines our sensitivity to prop or PCT, which are two of the things that are on that flavor test to see if you're a super taster. And people who have a broken receptor that don't taste that, who are non tasters of that tend to have more sinus infections. 00:45:46.87 Jala So that's kind of an interesting correlation there. Like if you can't pick up on this bitterness, like if you can't taste this proper PCT kind of thing, then that means you probably also can't tell if the air is full of bacteria. And so you're not getting that preliminary alarm to your immune system to fire up and get ready to to fight. 00:46:10.48 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. And that's, of course, why they call them super casers is because hating grapefruit gives you superpowers and it makes you immune to science infections. 00:46:20.47 Jala Right, right, exactly. 00:46:21.80 Michael Prehn No. 00:46:22.19 Jala That's what it is. 00:46:24.19 Michael Prehn You know, it's ah it makes sense, even though, you know, scientifically we haven't been able to pin those things together, it would ah follow with ah the sense of taste and smell being a survival tool of sorts. And a lot of the dangerous substances that are out there would be perceived as better. So it makes sense that our tongues would evolve so many different kinds of receptors for all these various compounds because it could be dangerous potentially. 00:46:50.15 Jala Absolutely. And Mr. Ickface. 00:46:52.78 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:46:54.11 Jala Mr. 00:46:54.16 Michael Prehn Yep, absolutely. 00:46:54.67 Jala Ickface on all the chemicals, but like, yes, they really do taste bad. So don't eat don't eat those things. 00:47:01.68 Michael Prehn hundred percent 00:47:01.99 Jala So, right, right. 00:47:02.36 Michael Prehn 100%. 00:47:03.39 Jala So tell us about umami. 00:47:06.27 Michael Prehn Yeah, so umami um is the youngest child of the flavor spectrum, so to speak. ah It gets its name from ah Japanese culture, I believe. 00:47:16.20 Jala Yes. 00:47:16.22 Michael Prehn and ah was not kind of formally embraced until, I believe, the late 90s. So things like ah sweet and sour, those have been around forever. But the global community didn't really embrace umami until fairly recently. um This is a ah very fundamentally savory flavor is how you might describe it. So these are things you get from a steak or mushrooms, um things of that nature. 00:47:45.56 Michael Prehn ah It is one of the pieces of flavor that is difficult to pin down because typically when we experience sweet flavors, it tends to be predominantly sweet most of the time. When we experience sour, it tends to be predominantly sour. Umami is kind of a background element in and a lot of ways, and our receptors kind of max out a low intensity on umami. 00:48:15.27 Michael Prehn So even though we may have a very strong reaction to extremely salty or bitter or sour things, we don't really have that same reaction to umami just because there's a lower ceiling on it for our receptors. 00:48:27.97 Jala Right. And so umami for folks, like the a shorthand way of thinking of umami is it's MSG. MSG is pure umami in ah a little container for you to use. 00:48:39.29 Michael Prehn Yes. 00:48:39.90 Jala So um there was that huge MSG scare that was you know going around and and associated mostly with Chinese restaurants and things like that. Once upon a time, that is like ah a weird racial ah problem. 00:48:53.97 Michael Prehn I was going to say um inspired by some people who have very negative thoughts about Asian people, and there's a whole media campaign and everything about it. 00:48:54.20 Jala there is 00:49:00.21 Jala Right. 00:49:04.69 Michael Prehn MSG is good, y'all. Cook with it. If you're not allergic or overly sensitive to it, ah because there are those people who who are sensitive, but by and large, most people aren't affected other than tasting something and saying, this is delicious. 00:49:10.86 Jala Right. 00:49:17.21 Jala Right, right. So what umami to me like makes it makes makes me what what I associate with umami is like the kind of fullness of the mouth feel because it makes it feel like a fuller thing that's in your mouth when you get that it it enriches and kind of enhances the flavors the meatier elements of something you know like that that savory kind of um heavier 00:49:30.90 Michael Prehn Mmhmm. 00:49:43.13 Jala taste that makes it feel you know like ah a richer dish that you're digging into, even if it is like a savory dish. It's a richer dish by by having that umami sense in there. And yeah, it is something that is like, you know it maxes out at a low intensity, so a little bit goes a long way. You don't need to douse everything in it, because like at a certain point, you're not going to taste any difference. So um you know that's something to keep in mind, but it does enhance the flavor of a thing. And it's real good, y'all. 00:50:12.66 Michael Prehn Yeah, umami is ah the primary flavor component of any number of savory foods. And like a lot of tastes, it's a complex combination of a lot of different factors. 00:50:23.02 Michael Prehn But the way that I always think about it is the difference between ah this is going to sound silly, but ah frozen ice cream and ice cream that's like semi melted where you get it. 00:50:33.34 Jala Mmhmm. 00:50:34.22 Michael Prehn And it's been out of the freezer for a few minutes. It's functionally the same thing, but you experience more of a richness from this ice cream because it's coating your tongue more strongly. 00:50:45.88 Michael Prehn ah So you hit more of those receptors. 00:50:48.18 Jala Right. 00:50:48.24 Michael Prehn That's kind of the difference that I think about with that. 00:50:50.85 Jala Right, right. it's It's that kind of similar feel. It's got that kind of ah greater richness to it again, ah even though it's it's ah functionally the same. So yeah. 00:51:00.85 Michael Prehn Right. 00:51:01.10 Jala um Moving on to sweets. So the big money in industrial research is in sweetness or actually how to make things taste sweet without adding a bunch of calories to it. 00:51:05.42 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:51:11.81 Jala So artificial sweeteners are and like, the how do they they reduce calories? So they do two different things. ah One, some of them are not broken down by the body, so they don't give any calories because they just pass through without anything happening. 00:51:27.38 Jala Others ah taste sweet at lower concentrations than regular sugar, so even though they are digestible, they deliver sweetness with fewer calories. But the problem is that all of these have a bitter aftertaste to them. 00:51:42.25 Jala however Different people have sensitivities to different ones, so certain people can't stand any artificial sweeteners. Other people can stand certain ones and not others, and that's because of the different bitter receptors, and some people have you know one or another receptor, or you know the the lucky winner of all of them doesn't get to have any artificial sweeteners without ah the bitterness at the end. 00:52:03.54 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:52:05.84 Jala so But the unfortunate thing is that, ah again, it has a max of how much sweetness it will impart. So it'll cap out. No matter how much you dump into your coffee, it will cap out at a 10.1% sugar solution. So ah Coke, for example, is 10.4% sugar and Pepsi is 11%. So like in a soft drink, it will taste less sweet, notably less sweet than if you use an actual sugar. And that's because you know it the perception stops after about 10.1% solution. 00:52:42.11 Jala so 00:52:42.45 Michael Prehn Right. Yeah, i'm ah we're a Diet Coke house over here at the Bren household. And um both of us are in agreement that ah the reason why is because regular Coke is too sweet ah to our tastes. 00:52:55.23 Michael Prehn It's overwhelming to a certain ah point. 00:52:55.29 Jala Right. 00:52:57.60 Michael Prehn So we actually prefer, even if the calories were the same, we prefer the 10.4% sugar versus whatever is in a regular Coke. 00:53:06.87 Jala Right. Right. And so ah that's a thing too, because since I cook a lot at home now, like granted since Dave, I have been making a lot more with like, um you know, some processed foods and things like that. There have to be concessions made because to cook for one is a lot easier to than to cook for two for a full week. And, um you know, like it's too time consuming. So we have to cut some corners somewhere. 00:53:32.03 Jala um 00:53:32.58 Michael Prehn Right. 00:53:33.03 Jala But when I was cooking everything on my own, I was super sensitive to salt and sugar because I didn't put any sugar in anything I was making ever. like if i If I had a sweetener in there, it was because I was using dates or I was using you know something else, something else to sweeten it, that's not just straight sugar and you know not granular sugar anyway. and um Then A salty because like everything processed has salt in it. 00:53:58.59 Jala It's all of high, high sodium. and so um If you are making stuff at home and you're not really using a whole bunch of salt, then everything tastes salty to you at a certain point because like you just don't get that and you get kind of accustomed to not having it. 00:54:00.82 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:54:12.81 Jala so Then when you do have it again, you're like, oh, oh that's too much. so 00:54:17.82 Michael Prehn Yeah, you hear those stories about people who take a break from fast food and when they try it again, it's like unpalatable to them because their body is acclimated to a different level. 00:54:28.07 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So kind of segueing into salty, talk about salty foods, Mike. 00:54:35.49 Michael Prehn This is where I start rubbing my hand together like a fly because this is my favorite one of the whole lot. 00:54:40.85 Jala Oh. 00:54:41.24 Michael Prehn I love salt. I i don't know if it's just a household I grew up in. Maybe that we're both Cuban. I attribute this to my Cuban heritage. I don't know if you can echo this, but boy, we love some salt in this culture. 00:54:49.43 Jala Yeah. Yeah. 00:54:53.56 Jala Uh-huh. 00:54:54.02 Michael Prehn um So ah second only is sweetness. Salt substitutes are also big money items in industrial research. Hey, that's me. ah Potato chips and things like that, jerky. I mean, you you think about what a gigantic conglomerate ah Frito Lay is. Like they've made billions and billions of dollars primarily off of salt and how to play off of it. 00:55:18.31 Michael Prehn um The ah source says that salt contributes ah much more than just a salty taste to the flavor of a dish. ah Used judiciously, salt can enhance all of the other flavors, making meat meatier, more umami, right? 00:55:33.40 Michael Prehn Beans beanier, potatoes potato-ier. That's a hard word to say. 00:55:37.44 Jala Potatowier. Yeah. 00:55:40.36 Michael Prehn Thank you. yeah um So that's mostly because sodium ions help draw other flavor compounds, ah and including compounds that enhance smell, out of the ingredients into solution where we can detect them. you know We all know how it works. like Salt is a hydrophilic substance. it It bonds really effectively with water and water-like substances. ah This brings stuff out of the food and into the space where we can taste it. 00:56:08.51 Michael Prehn um This explains why a skilled cook can often tell by smell whether or not a dish needs more salt, which I can, and it freaks people out every time. Very fun party trick. ah So there are three ways to deliver all of the flavor bang of regular salt with less sodium. 00:56:27.10 Michael Prehn um So first one you've probably seen it if you've ever bought low sodium salt in the grocery store ah you replace the sodium which is the traditional one sodium chloride with a different salt ion. 00:56:40.40 Michael Prehn So a lot of the time this will be ah potassium in things whenever you get low sodium salt ah which tastes very similar but has slightly different chemical compounds to it. 00:56:43.63 Jala Mmhmm. 00:56:51.62 Michael Prehn um Second approach is to find a way to get more flavor from the same amount of salt. ah Smaller salt crystals dissolve more quickly so they bring ah those substances out into solution um and then we already mentioned MSG which is not a sodium of any kind but it has the impact similar to salt or something like that. 00:57:15.36 Michael Prehn And then um you can add any ah one of these things to your food to get more sodium out of your food without actually ingesting more sodium. um you know For example, they've been working on changing the texture of sausages to make them juicier. In essence, ah the ah book said whenever you chew these juicier sausages, you squeeze more of the salty moisture out into your mouth. So the sausage just tastes ah just as salty, but with less salt to it. 00:57:44.92 Jala Mm hmm. 00:57:45.44 Michael Prehn And then the ah third and final trick to getting more salt bang for your buck is to trick the brain into thinking the food is saltier than it is. Since your brain blends aromas and tastes together into a unified perception of flavor, um the ah researcher we're reading from here and his team have been experimenting with adding aromas that we're used to smelling in high salt contexts. 00:58:10.00 Michael Prehn which I can probably imagine would be like fried foods, anchovies, things of that nature. 00:58:15.82 Jala Right, right. And that's the thing is that like, if you smell that smell, there's that anticipation, right? You get that anticipation and then that's going to alter your perception. 00:58:22.31 Michael Prehn Right. 00:58:25.44 Jala And like that also comes into play when it comes to like ah some of the other fun experiments folks were doing. And then also some of the ways in which artificial flavors ah can alter stuff without actually changing the taste itself. 00:58:42.96 Jala So, cause again, you already mentioned it with that breakfast cereal example, the aroma of the blueberries is there. 00:58:43.34 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:58:49.21 Jala And so that's what makes it taste like blueberry. You know, so. 00:58:53.37 Michael Prehn Yeah, this is my other um fun trick for this. ah So whenever we need a food to taste saltier in a restaurant presentation without actually changing the composition of the food, if you serve it on a hotel pan, especially with butcher paper, it tests about 10% saltier for most people. 00:59:14.73 Michael Prehn ah without actually changing any of the context. And I guess it's because people mentally have an association with hotel pans and butcher paper with like a roast chicken or something like that that's very savory. 00:59:26.34 Jala Mm hmm. And that's that's just another aspect of it, because, say, for example, if this is a a little bit later, but some of the other weird things that happen with flavor is like, if you have a yogurt, it's the same yogurt and you put it into a lightweight dish versus a heavy bottom dish. 00:59:34.61 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:59:44.43 Jala and you serve it to someone, they will think that the one in the heavy bottom dish, when they pick that up and they hold it and then they're eating it, they will think that one tastes richer than the one that's in the lightweight dish, even though it's the same yogurt. 00:59:59.53 Michael Prehn Yep, it's a very strange thing, but again, it's synthetic senses. Humans put together all these different inputs for any of these flavors. 01:00:08.61 Jala Right. So ah there's also some evidence that we have a taste for calcium and for carbon dioxide. So think about carbonated beverages, for example. And for calcium, I have I have definitely on multiple occasions told turned around and told somebody I can taste the vitamins and people think I'm weird. 01:00:27.02 Michael Prehn the 01:00:28.82 Jala And I'm like, no, I can taste the vitamins in this, you know. 01:00:32.32 Michael Prehn The calcium thing makes a lot of sense to me because I have had calcium supplemented foods that it something tastes a little bit off about them and I could see it being the actual calcium itself. 01:00:34.37 Jala Yeah. 01:00:44.25 Jala Right, right. so And yeah, carbon dioxide, there's definitely a ah specific flavor that comes with carbonated beverages where that is in there. um And I think it's more noticeable in something like a club soda or you know like one of those those beverages where it's just like the sparkling water that just has a little bit of you know carbon dioxide in it. 01:01:04.76 Jala It tastes different. 01:01:05.36 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:01:05.74 Jala And it's not just because it has the bubbles, although that's part of the flavor too. um It's also because the carbon dioxide changes the way it tastes. so 01:01:15.90 Michael Prehn Yes, um that's the reason why people sometimes talk about like the sodas from a restaurant ah being tastier than the exact same soda ah bought at the store, and that's by design. ah Those are actually formulated a little bit differently, but most of the difference in their presentation is that the restaurant um sodas are carbonated more. 01:01:39.84 Jala Right. 01:01:40.15 Michael Prehn And that's because companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, they want you to go to a restaurant and buy the fountain drinks because they make quite a lot more money off of it than they do the canned or bottled versions of that. 01:01:50.80 Jala Yeah, yeah. So ah there's also interesting research that suggests that we might have a taste for water. And as an endurance athlete type person, I can tell you that my body will straight crave water, ah water in specific, not Gatorade, not any so kind of supplemented mixed up drink, it wants water specifically. 01:02:13.48 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:02:14.58 Jala I've learned in in very many times of of being very dehydrated to very much love the taste of water by itself. so 01:02:24.43 Michael Prehn Yeah, I'm still working on that one. 01:02:28.25 Jala Yeah, but another one that's interesting. I don't know if you know anything about this one, Mike, but there's also a mysterious one that's called Kokumi, which many Asian researchers think might have another basic taste pattern. 01:02:35.84 Michael Prehn Mhm. 01:02:40.78 Jala So many Western say scientists are very skeptical about it because they don't have any familiarity with it, you know, so they have no idea. 01:02:48.51 Michael Prehn Right. 01:02:49.12 Jala But kokumi is a thing. You can find a kokumi powder from a Korean grocer, and kokumi doesn't have its own taste. But when you add it to something that already has a salty or umami taste, it enhances those flavors. 01:03:05.93 Jala so In a lab at Manil, um and there there was like the the author of this book had tasted some popcorn sprinkled with Kokumi powder, and the way that he described it is, as a haunting elusive flavor that was hard to put my finger on, sort of cheesy, sort of meaty, like the flavor powder on the surface of Doritos. 01:03:26.96 Jala So from that alone, I'm just like, well, now I need to go get some Kokumi powder and try it because now I'm really curious, but it it enhances anything salty or umami. 01:03:27.09 Michael Prehn Hmm. Yeah. 01:03:37.75 Jala And you know, everybody in America loves their salt and their umami. So, and so yeah, how about you tell us a little bit about touch and, uh, this also leads into hotness and we'll get into hot foods as well, but, uh, start us off here. 01:03:42.40 Michael Prehn I know I do. 01:03:56.06 Michael Prehn Yeah, so now we're kind of getting into senses that people may not necessarily associate with ah flavor. um Touch, ah as the book says, is our third primary flavor s sense. It flies so far under the radar that even flavor wonks haven't agreed on a single name for it. ah Sensory scientists are apt to refer to it as chemisthesis. 01:04:19.26 Jala Chemisthesis. 01:04:19.50 Michael Prehn ah so matt 01:04:20.63 Jala Yeah. So medicine station. 01:04:21.41 Michael Prehn somata sensation yeah and a trigeminal s sense, each of each of which covers a slightly different subset of the s sense, and none of which mean much at all to the rest of the world. 01:04:33.43 Michael Prehn The common theme, though, is that all these sensations are really manifestations of our sense of touch, and they're surprisingly vital to our experience of flavor. 01:04:42.02 Jala Right. 01:04:42.77 Michael Prehn ah Touch, smell, taste, ah the flavor trinity is what the author calls it. 01:04:48.35 Jala um right 01:04:48.74 Michael Prehn And this is true. I mean, we've done a bunch of research on this kind of thing about the effects that different plate ware has on food or what you wrap your sandwiches in. 01:04:59.71 Michael Prehn And that all contributes to flavor in that ah synthetic sense. 01:05:04.89 Jala And, uh, I just wanted to insert when it comes to stuff like vegan foods, for example, um, vegan foods, especially if you're trying to, to craft your own homemade, doesn't necessarily have to taste like meat, but have that comparable texture kind of thing. 01:05:04.91 Michael Prehn on the Sorry, go ahead. 01:05:21.76 Jala Like that texture becomes really important when it comes to with like a vegan meat substitute, for example. 01:05:26.66 Michael Prehn Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's one of the things that people who are transitioning from a a meat diet to a vegan diet, sometimes you'll hear complaints about it is like, oh, it's just not, it doesn't feel right, you know? 01:05:40.54 Jala Mm hmm. Yes. 01:05:42.83 Michael Prehn Yeah, so the sensation of touch is also how we understand spicy flavors. um A receptor called TRPA1, which the research calls the Wasabi receptor, causes the sensation of heat from Wasabi, horseradish, and mustards, as well as onions, garlic, and cinnamon. TRPA1 is also responsible for the back of the throat burn that aficionados value and their extra virgin olive oil. 01:06:12.33 Jala I have never swigged a bunch of extra virgin olive oil to know what they're talking about with this throat burn. I mean, like I have extra virgin olive oil, but I have not been curious enough to actually do that. 01:06:24.55 Jala do Have you experienced this? Have you just taken a swig of some olive oil, Mike? 01:06:29.48 Michael Prehn So, weirdly enough, yes I have. 01:06:31.51 Jala Okay. 01:06:32.08 Michael Prehn and it was 01:06:32.33 Jala I figured you would have, but I just wanted to know. 01:06:36.00 Michael Prehn So sometimes you have to go down a rabbit hole with this kind of research stuff for work, and you've got to figure out what difference there is between the various extra virgin olive oils that are out there. 01:06:47.72 Jala Uh-huh. 01:06:48.15 Michael Prehn ah Because when you're making something like a caprese salad that has three ingredients and none of them are particularly strongly flavored, that matters a lot. 01:06:51.84 Jala Mm-hmm. Yeah. 01:06:57.21 Michael Prehn So I had a weird experience in 2013 where I had to buy like 25 different brands of extra virgin olive oil and just try them straight up. And ah not not my most fun research project, um but it I can confirm that there is an a burn of sorts to it and a as stringency, which is a word that's going to come back a little bit later. 01:07:20.06 Jala Right, right. That's interesting. So ah yeah, i I don't know that I'm going to just go rush inside after we're done talking to go into my pantry to get the olive oil to try this on myself. But I will just, suffice to say, I will trust that that that is part of the experience of the olive oil um partaking. 01:07:39.35 Jala so 01:07:40.45 Michael Prehn Yeah, I can't recommend it really. 01:07:40.53 Jala um 01:07:43.35 Jala So, so let's talk about the hotness, the new hotness. And I've got ah an anecdote, a personal anecdote about this. So ah first and foremost, let's talk about the hotness scale of Scovilles. So just to give you an idea of like some common pepper. So Anaheim's and Poblano's are about 500 and 1000 Scovilles respectively. Jalapenos are about 5,000 Scovilles. are Cayenne's are 40,000. 01:08:12.84 Jala Thai bird's-eye chilies are near 100,000, and habaneros are 100,000 to 300,000 Scovilles. But then, from there, like it goes all the way up through all these other peppers, and then a lot of people have already heard of the Carolina Reaper, but that is 2.2 million Scovilles, which is approximately the potency of police-grade pepper spray. 01:08:39.59 Jala No, thank you. 01:08:40.14 Michael Prehn Yeah, yeah this is ah this is big business nowadays. 01:08:40.72 Jala ah 01:08:44.12 Michael Prehn It's very trendy. It's sort of falling out of favor now, but the last couple of years, it's been a big thing of making like ghost pepper chips and ghost pepper jerky and you know Carolina Reaper barbecue sauce. 01:08:57.79 Michael Prehn People love to push their limits with this stuff for sure. 01:09:00.78 Jala Yeah, so unaltered capsaicin packs 16 million Scovilles. So if you want to just straight up, I'm going to ingest capsaicin, 16 million. 01:09:13.40 Jala That's so much more than just Carolina Reaper. I don't even know if you can ingest that safely. ah But the absolute, yeah, so so what's interesting is just for a funsy fact, ah the Moroccan Spurge plant delivers 01:09:18.58 Michael Prehn No. 01:09:25.95 Jala 16 billion Scovilles in its purified form, which is enough to cause a lethal chemical burns. So yeah, like, uh, this kind of stuff, like it's wild. Um, so I do have a fun story about this and, um, you know, ah just about the hotness and the perception of hotness. So I have a hop and euro plant. I also, um, so, so for a while, Dave and I were going to a local, 01:09:55.52 Jala a taco chain called Torchi's Tacos because they have a very tasty um taco that has vegan, you know, it's a vegan one. So ah we go there and we eat this. Well, ah we loved it a lot and we started trying to make it at home. um We're like, okay, surely we can make this at home, but they have this Torche's Diablo sauce. Very good stuff. Love it. So I was googling around and I'm like, I've got to find a way to make this sauce because I can you know i can spice this meat, you know this vegan meat up this way, and we can add all the other ingredients, no problem, but I need to get the sauce going. 01:10:30.20 Jala And I found the recipe on Reddit. Somebody took a picture of of it from the actual torches recipe that makes like five gallons or whatever. And then I i calculated out how to make like a human sized batch. 01:10:43.53 Jala And I made the tortoise Diablo sauce, which is a habanero sauce. And we have been eating that a lot. And right at first when we started eating these, um and and we've gone through like multiple jars and jars and jars of this stuff now. um When i first we started first started eating this, we were like, oh, this is hot. And they would get all sweaty and stuff like that and turn all red. And be burning for a while afterwards. 01:11:10.57 Jala And then like over time, we've gotten trained on it where it's fine. And like then we made like a stew recently that and you includes a bunch of hub and or um jalapenos. 01:11:22.68 Jala And when we did this, nor the last time we made it was like before we got on our torches binge so of making our own... you know We've got torches at home, torches, um you know that are healthier and not as greasy and stuff. 01:11:33.48 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:11:36.23 Jala and um so like We had that stuff before and it was really hot. and Then we tried it again and I'm like, I can barely taste the peppers in this. What is up with these? Then you know we thought about it and we're like, oh, I think it's because we've we're we're so accustomed to the heat now that like that that's nothing to us anymore. We're going to have to throw habaneros in there to taste it anymore, I think. 01:12:02.23 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's, you know, it's experiential like and has to do with your upbringing like a lot of this stuff. ah See also, you know, going to a Thai restaurant and if you didn't grow up eating that kind of food, one or two star of spiciness might be the best that you can handle. 01:12:17.06 Michael Prehn I know I can't. 01:12:17.12 Jala Oh yeah. Well, i I am like, ah the last time we went to the Thai restaurant after our Torcheys binge, I was like you know i was eating it at level four and I'm like, this does not move in the needle for me. So I think I'm going to be at like the hottest food pretty pretty soon here. 01:12:32.81 Jala cause 01:12:33.28 Michael Prehn You've developed a new superpower. 01:12:34.74 Jala I have developed an immunity to the burn. so yeah but What's interesting about chilies though is that they also differ in how long the burn lasts. 01:12:38.52 Michael Prehn but 01:12:44.91 Jala Halapenos and different Asian varieties usually fade relatively quickly, although I do have a story about death halapenos, I'll tell you in a minute. um Others like habaneros can linger for hours. And where the chili hits you also varies. So a jalapeno, it's usually the tip of your tongue and the lips with New Mexico pod types. It's in the middle of your mouth. With a habanero, it's at the back. And then there's just a bunch of different aspects to these and they're all a little bit different. And then fourth, you know, to another aspect of this is that um there's a sharp or a flat quality to the burn. So sharp is like 01:13:22.18 Jala pins sticking in your mouth and flat is more like a paintbrush. And um if you've eaten a lot of peppers, you understand what they're talking about here. And if you don't, that's okay. You probably won't ever, because I don't know you're going to get into ah a deep pepper eating binge, unless you've decided that you like Torchey's Diablo sauce. 01:13:40.94 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:13:43.42 Jala so 01:13:44.84 Michael Prehn And this kind of contributes to how these are used culinarily because you have peppers like ah New Mexico chilies or ah Chipotle peppers that have a very flat ah quality to their burn. 01:13:58.49 Michael Prehn So they lend themselves well to being in the background of a dish versus the highlight because they just kind of smooth everything out. 01:14:02.54 Jala Right. 01:14:05.94 Jala Right, right. so I do have to tell you about the jalapeno, death jalapenos. One year we were we were raising some jalapeno plants and ah you know had a little bush out in the backyard. 01:14:10.88 Michael Prehn Please. 01:14:16.90 Jala We always have peppers of some sort. They grow great here. and um so Anyway, we I was chopping the jalapenos one day to put them in the dish, and I did this all the time. Usually no problem, but this jalapeno was so potent. 01:14:29.09 Jala Not only was it super, super, super hot in the dish, But because I had, you know, cut up the pepper, my hands started to burn and they started burning so badly that I had to put ice packs on my hands. 01:14:39.21 Michael Prehn Yeah Louise 01:14:44.29 Jala And it was like overnight, I like I went to sleep and I had to like wake up in the middle of the night to change the ice packs on my hand. Because it was burning so much. It was so bad so bad i've never felt that bad before And that's weird because jalapenos don't normally do that So I don't know what they crossed that one at you know that one with because that's not a normal jalapeno but 01:15:07.35 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, it could be something as simple as the T-R-R, like it might've just gotten a chunk of some mineral in your dirt that ah it made quite a lot of capsaicin off of. You know, it's any organic product, they vary a lot. 01:15:21.77 Jala Yeah, but the thing about it is that it was in the same damn dirt that I keep using. It's the same mixture of dirt that I've been using, ah you know, like potting soil stuff. It wasn't like my my ground dirt because the the dirt here is clay, so nothing likes to grow in this dirt really. 01:15:34.00 Michael Prehn Hmm. Yeah. 01:15:39.59 Jala So ah yeah, I don't know. 01:15:40.25 Michael Prehn Who knows? That one was on a mission, I guess. 01:15:42.12 Jala I guess it was because that was a horrible experience that I had. So um yeah, if you were in doubt at all about the hotness of your pepper, wear some kind of gloves or something. Don't chop it without gloves. 01:15:51.94 Michael Prehn Oh, yeah. Please. 01:15:53.79 Jala um So yeah, but jalapenos normally, not a problem. You just wash your hands and you don't even perceive it unless you like rub your eye or something, you know which don't do that either. um But like yeah, that that particular case was just wild. 01:16:08.18 Jala Anyway, so there are other touch sensations. ah Intriguingly, there is a kind of tingling sensation from sesetuan pepper. So um I've never had it on its own to know what they're talking about. Have you, Mike? 01:16:23.90 Michael Prehn I have. I've had some research projects that involve this stuff, and what you pulled from the research here is a pretty apt description. You usually find them in Asian grocery stores and specialty stores, things like that. ah They do look like little brown Pac-Men, and ah the experiment that this ah text suggests is to put a pinch in your mouth and chew for a moment, making sure it makes good contact with your tongue, wait a little while, 01:16:50.20 Michael Prehn And at first you get some hotness like black pepper, but then it's replaced by a tingling sensation that ah is kind of unique. It's difficult to describe. And some people describe it as being similar to kind of licking a battery. And I'd say that's pretty close. um It is a It's a fascinating kind of thing because if you overdo it like I did on one of the revisions of this project, ah it can actually be very disorienting, um kind of ah similar to being in a concert hall with like very loud music blasting, where that's almost knocked you off your feet a little bit just from the sensation, you know, very interesting ingredient. 01:17:14.77 Jala Oh no. 01:17:31.96 Jala Well, because like your mouth is your mouth is vibrating basically at that point. 01:17:36.05 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:17:37.23 Jala so So yeah, the reason why this is done is that um the active ingredient in this pepper sensual blocks the flow of potassium out of nerve cells. 01:17:37.77 Michael Prehn Yeah, yeah. 01:17:48.40 Jala So this outward trickle of potassium acts to suppress nerve activity. So in effect, it tickles the nerves so they're they're going to fire at random. so Another way of describing it that I've read is just like vibration. 01:18:02.91 Jala and It just feels like your your your mouth is vibrating or something. 01:18:03.74 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:18:06.49 Jala so 01:18:07.77 Michael Prehn Yeah, I would say that's accurate. 01:18:10.00 Jala yeah so oh Let's go ahead and talk about that astringency. You were already mentioning it ah earlier, so go ahead and and tell us more. 01:18:17.25 Michael Prehn Sure. and This is one of those taste senses that also tends to be very divisive. um It's sort of akin in the way that people perceive it to a bitter flavor, although it's not the same thing, ah really. A stringency, if you're not familiar with the concept, is that kind of like a teabag flavor that you might get from a over brewed tea or a very tannic red wine, like an unaged red or a minimally aged red. 01:18:46.96 Michael Prehn or if you eat a banana that's unripe, that kind of like dry feeling on your palate. That's what astringency is. um So astringency for a lot of people is a pretty unpleasant flavor, ah which is why sometimes they are paired intentionally to sort of mask astringency or have it act in opposition to a flavor. So if you think about the fact that um you typically get red wine with steak, that's because steak is a very umami, ah savory kind of flavor, the insuringency of the red wine kind of mellows it out. 01:19:21.70 Michael Prehn Or sorbet after like a rich soup like a clam chowder or something like that. um Pickles with sausage, classic combo, right? And green tea with ah that stir fried pork that tends to be very rich and oily. 01:19:36.57 Michael Prehn um A lot of these are classic combos because when you pair them together, the astringency sort of acts as a palate cleanser. It shocks your senses so that you can kind of hit a hard reset on them and get ready for the next delicious bite, you know? 01:19:52.51 Jala Right, right. And that's because of the fat content and all of these different things. like They're usually paired with higher fat things. 01:19:58.16 Michael Prehn Right. 01:19:59.59 Jala like A red wine also goes really well with a rich chocolate. So even if it's a super dry red, it's fantastic if you have like a chocolate truffle with it as well. 01:20:05.10 Michael Prehn Yes. 01:20:10.97 Jala And so um you know like that's something to try if you've never done it before um because like that really just alters the experience of that wine. And um yeah, like that that that right there, like the pairing stuff with wines is something that i I love because I love wine. 01:20:27.64 Jala and so And I like red wine the most, but um i I like to try different stuff with the wine and suggest that people try different things with wine. 01:20:28.34 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. Yep. 01:20:39.47 Jala And it always makes me so happy when I have folks together. Like ah we visited our friends, John and Desiree, Dave and I did. And I was like, here, now try this wine on its own. Now here have it with this. And then just like when the little light bulbs go off and it's like, oh wow, that's totally different with this thing. Like it's amazing. And what I'm doing there is I'm crafting a flavor and that flavor isn't the flavor of just the wine by itself. It's that pairing of the wine with the the piece of whatever i'm I'm, you know, food, whatever food I'm pairing it with. 01:21:12.22 Jala And that together makes this kind of like synthesis of flavor between the two where they complement each other and balance them, you know, balance out the, you know, the differences between the two. 01:21:23.85 Michael Prehn Right. If we experience flavor as a composite of all of these various senses, adding a secondary input to it can complicate things in a good way, ah which is why food and wine pairing or food and food pairing is a thing. It's exponentially more complex and potentially better than either of those two things would be separately. It's ah greater than the sum of its parts. 01:21:47.98 Jala ah Right. And you can do the same thing with tea. You can do the same thing with coffee. 01:21:51.10 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 01:21:51.50 Jala You can do it with beer. Anything that's got, especially if it's got nuances of flavor and stuff, like something like a Coca-Cola or whatever, like that's a real, like just overbearing flavor that you get out of that. 01:22:03.37 Jala So like, you know, there are some things that that carbonation and that bubbliness kind of um counteract with and and work really well together with, but like because it doesn't have like a nuance to its flavor, 01:22:16.00 Jala it doesn't work the same way as when you have something more complex. So 01:22:20.52 Michael Prehn Yeah, typically the rule of thumb for this kind of thing for wine pairing or or food pairing is that you want things that are roughly equivalent strengths. So that's why when you're doing wine tastings, you tend to go from the weakest ah flavored one to the strongest one. That's why chocolate, you mentioned chocolate and red wine is famously a very difficult ah combination to pull off very well because chocolate is it's a flavor bomb like it's incredibly powerfully flavored. 01:22:51.25 Jala you would not have a white wine with a chocolate unless it was like a white chocolate. You know what I mean? Like, ah ah right, right. 01:22:57.19 Michael Prehn Right, but that's kind of a different thing Sure 01:22:59.91 Jala And then like, you know, you get more like fruity things and like you can have a creamy thing because like the acidity of a white wine can really cut through a creamy dish and make like balance that out really well um and things like that. 01:23:13.18 Jala But like, you know, it it just kind of depends. But either way, either way. so Yeah, the the fatty end of the equation ah seems to be a matter of texture. so um As we've seen, our sense of taste picks up on the nasty, rancid, fatty acid part of fats. so like If you take a big bite of a piece of just fat on the end of a a steak or something like that, that's kind of most people don't like that. 01:23:40.34 Jala That's kind of like gristle and and stuff like that. 01:23:40.40 Michael Prehn Mhm. 01:23:42.42 Jala There are people who do, but I think they might be one of those like, I've learned to eat it and like it, you know, kind of people. 01:23:48.80 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:23:50.48 Jala But yeah, it's not the same thing as like the rich, creamy and luscious ah integrated fat, right? Like the fat that's inside of the steak that's marbled in there is better than the pieces of fat on the sides that are chunks, right? 01:24:05.01 Jala So, um you know, when we savor something like a buttery sauce, a bowl of ice cream, ah we're detecting the fat as kind of like a smooth viscous coating in the mouth, which you mentioned when you were talking about, um you know, the totally frozen ice cream versus the slightly melted. What's happening there is you're allowing that, the with that melting, you're allowing that fat ah sensation, that mouthfeel that you get off of that ah ice cream to hit you a little bit better. Because if that ice cream is totally frozen when it hits your palate, ah you're going to kind of like chew on it and swallow it. And you don't get that same effect, that immersion effect that you really want out of something creamy. So 01:24:49.18 Michael Prehn Fat molecules, notably, are denser than a lot of liquids, and they tend to stick together. So that forms ah sort of a solid ah kind of approach to your taste buds, which is why everything tastes better with butter. Everything tastes better with olive oil. you know It's similar to salt in that it just kind of pumps everything up. 01:25:10.00 Jala Right. Right. So, and that's also why when it comes to something like um a low fat processed food, they usually amp up the sweetness or the salt or both of these things to try to compensate for the lack of fat in the product to make it appealing in another way that isn't with that richness and that kind of like mouth feel that you get off of a really fatty food. 01:25:35.42 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. Absolutely. 01:25:37.68 Jala Yeah, so let's move on to sight. So sight is another one of those synthetic senses, which we mentioned before. ah You don't see lines and curves. You see a composite shape in front of your eyes, that kind of thing. So um food being the appropriate color makes a difference on how it tastes. And I have a fun story about that. When I was little, I went through a phase with the the food coloring. 01:25:58.49 Jala And I was coloring everything colors. 01:25:59.38 Michael Prehn Oh yeah. 01:26:00.77 Jala And so I had green spaghetti and purple spaghetti sauce and stuff like that. And I thought it was great. And everybody else was like, I'm not eating that. And I'm like, but it's wonderful. 01:26:11.63 Jala It's great. And it's also fun colors. I love it. And I would just color all of my beverages, no matter what it was, some colors. And and I had a lot of fun with that food coloring kit until I ran out of food coloring. 01:26:22.74 Jala um Much to everybody else's relief. 01:26:23.09 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:26:25.85 Michael Prehn that can ah That's a very common ah thing in kids' food products is like, oh, the purple ketchup or whatever, right? 01:26:32.20 Jala Right. 01:26:33.37 Michael Prehn And part of that is because these kids, you know as they're growing up, what they're trying to do is to experience the world around them so that they can suss stuff out. 01:26:44.04 Michael Prehn So there is kind of an instinct, I guess, to ah see what a purple food tastes like. And that's, you know, also there's novelty at play with that. Like you don't really see like green ah food that isn't a vegetable very often. So that's why it's stuff like green mayo is like really popular. But as part of kids exploring the world around them. 01:27:05.68 Jala Right, right. so Also, food that looks fresher tastes better if you can see that it is fresh. so you know If you can't, it's going to taste the same. like you can Here's the secret. Put all of your wilty vegetables into like a soup or a stew or something where they're going to get wilted anyway. 01:27:24.02 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm, yep. 01:27:24.13 Jala You know but like if you have to use them up like if you're just cooking at home I'm not talking about like, you know, like, you know Top chefs type stuff, but like if you have stuff you need to use up Make a stew or ah make a soup or something and then it won't bother you but if you try to cook something like a Let's say like ah a fried rice or something and you want like a crisp green pepper, but yours is wilty. 01:27:47.66 Jala You're not gonna like it When that thing's mushy in there you just aren't but you know like it's it's the expectation of the the style of the food that you're making you know um So yeah 01:27:57.54 Michael Prehn Yeah, the eyes eat first as everyone's heard. 01:28:00.61 Jala Yep, yep. So yeah, even the color of the crockery can make a difference to flavor. So ah there was a test done where tasters rated strawberry mousse being sweeter when it was served on a white place white plate rather than a black plate. So you know um that perception and that might also be because the white plate will like highlight the color of the strawberry mousse and stuff like that a little bit more than like a black, which will just kind of like absorb that color. 01:28:30.05 Jala But, um you know, like there's more at work there. 01:28:30.33 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:28:32.23 Jala So even like the choice of your dishes and what color that is will change things. So, um yeah, it also will change the the color of the food will change our perception of sweetness, but not saltiness. 01:28:45.28 Jala So presumably that's because in the natural world, color signals when a fruit is ripe and you know sweet rather than under ripe and sour. But we have no similar color clues for saltiness. 01:28:58.72 Jala So that's kind of interesting. But um yeah, the brighter that a thing is and you you know, the more you expect it to have kind of like this, this o richer flavor to it. 01:29:10.63 Jala so 01:29:11.24 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's why a lot of desserts tend to lean heavily on those more exotic colors in their presentation. like No one really wants like a bright ah purple like savory dish, or I don't want to say nobody, because purple cauliflower is delicious. But you know it's less common. So ah people kind of expect an explosion of colors with their desserts, probably because of that fruit tie-in from our ancient history. 01:29:37.46 Jala Oh yeah, for sure. And there was another thing that was like an experiment done that was really fun. ah They had a bunch of participants compare the experience of sipping a single Scotch whiskey um in three different rooms. And those rooms had different lighting. So one of them was green. 01:29:56.26 Jala and it had leafy plants and the fragrance of cut grass. So then in that room, the participants felt that the whiskey had a grassy flavor because they were smelling grass. So that's what they tasted as well. And then in another room with red lights, it had rounded furnishings and fruity aromas. And then suddenly the scotch tasted sweeter to everybody. 01:30:21.24 Jala because of those fruity aromas, you get that scent and then that's what you're expecting. And then, you know, like some of that is going to be mixed in with the taste coming in on your tongue because like you're breathing in that air that has that scent. And then finally, they also did a dimly wit dimly lit wood paneled chamber that had cedar scent and it had this woody aftertaste to it suddenly because of the cedar scent in the darkness of the room and it kind of felt like you were you know sitting around a fireplace or whatever. 01:30:45.67 Michael Prehn Yes. 01:30:52.26 Jala and um It was the exact same whiskey. They were carrying it in their hand from room to room, but just the smells around them and the environment around them influenced how these people felt about the wine and what they tasted in the wine. 01:30:57.08 Michael Prehn Right. 01:31:08.24 Jala Because again, or not wine, ah whiskey. Because again, this is some you know like an experience like a whole holistic experience when you're getting the flavor of something. 01:31:19.69 Michael Prehn Right. um You know, anyone who's been to a fancy restaurant knows that they dim the lights about 30 percent more than they would in anybody's house. But part of that is because with less visual input, ah people tend to focus subconsciously more on the other elements of the flavor of their food, which gives a heightened perception of its quality. 01:31:42.67 Jala Right. Absolutely. And that was the first thing that I thought of when I was reading this stuff about lighting. And then I was like, oh, but what about the Mask of the Red Death? 01:31:48.36 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:31:50.96 Jala I wonder what those drinks tasted like. Anyway. 01:31:54.24 Michael Prehn Yep. It's ah also the other one that I think of as the recent explosion and popularity of serving food items on wood planks. 01:31:56.03 Jala ah 01:32:03.25 Jala Yeah. 01:32:04.06 Michael Prehn Oftentimes rough cut and it's because that evokes kind of like you said cooking around a campfire, happy memories, savory foods, you know really popular with anything that's like smoked or whatever. 01:32:16.25 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. And that will it absolutely enhance the the smokiness of the the flavor and the the kind of richness of it, I feel. So yeah, talk about sound, Mike. 01:32:25.85 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:32:29.56 Michael Prehn Yeah, so um the quote that we have here is, a steak sizzle is part of its flavor. um Researchers say Spencer and his associate Max Sampini asked 20 volunteers to munch their way through 180 Pringles each, rating the flavor of each chip while wearing audio headphones that played the sound of their crunching back to them. 01:32:51.46 Michael Prehn As the volunteers kept going through the experiment, a computer modified the playback to make them quieter or louder, and to emphasize certain parts of the audio frequencies. The crunch, they found, was a key part of the chip's flavor. When volunteers heard a louder crunch, or even just a louder high frequency part of the crunch, they rated the chips about 15% crunchier and fresher tasting than when they heard quieter sounds. 01:33:16.94 Michael Prehn and there is evidence of this everywhere in the world if you're looking for it. People like Frito-Lay have um spent billions and billions of dollars on maximizing this because it's one of the cheapest things to put out there to improve the quote unquote quality of your product. 01:33:36.91 Michael Prehn Think about watching any commercial in the world for a snack food. If it's supposed to be crunchy, the crunches, the primary sound effect that they play or that ah horrible drink pouring noise that they use for ah cokes and Pepsi's, you know, it's supposed to evoke a certain kind of flavor. 01:33:51.70 Jala Mm-hmm Yeah Yep, that was exactly what I was thinking about too. 01:33:54.40 Michael Prehn um And it's 100% true. I mean, the example I always think about is ah Chili's with their fajitas, right? Like they're there. 01:34:04.24 Jala I was about to mention the chilies fajitas Sizzling on the plate walked in and then you get the scent you get the sight of the smoke the sizzle all of that No 01:34:07.59 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:34:10.33 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:34:15.69 Michael Prehn Like, let's be honest, there's nothing really that special about that fajita. Like, it's, you know, Chili's is a height, but it's not like anything to write home about. But they were one of the first people to latch on the fact that the full sensory experience really improves ah the perceived quality of of foods. And it made them millions of dollars. You know, sounds very important to food. ah Sounds that you might hear when someone is eating, 01:34:43.89 Michael Prehn ah like, for example, ocean sounds when eating fish or a little pleasant murmur of conversation around dinner, it will affect your perception of the meal's flavor. It's why there can never, ever, ever be dead silence in a restaurant is because it it you know the silence evokes like being in danger, which makes people not hungry, which affects the quality of their meals. 01:35:09.79 Jala Mmhmm. 01:35:10.33 Michael Prehn um Another experience that they talk about in this research, ah one group of researchers have volunteers rate the flavor of several coffees as they listen to sounds of a coffee maker in the background. Unknown to the tasters, every cup of coffee was actually identical, but they rated the coffee 10% tastier when they heard sounds of a more expensive coffee maker. ah It's actually the same recording, but with some annoying high frequencies muted. 01:35:38.76 Michael Prehn So again, going back to like sound being something that people don't really think about a lot with flavor, but it does always kind of influence it in the background. 01:35:47.57 Jala Oh, yeah. And then this also comes into just like the anticipation of a flavor. So for example, um if somebody tells you this wine is really expensive, and this is another thing that they they did a test and they they tried this out as well. 01:36:02.93 Jala They told these people that the wine was much more expensive than it was, and they started telling them different price points than what it was. Like they would say, oh, this is a really cheap wine, but it was actually a really high quality. 01:36:10.11 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:36:13.18 Jala Well, I say high quality is ah an expensive wine. but they said it was a cheap wine, and then the people rated it lower. 01:36:17.29 Michael Prehn Right. 01:36:20.23 Jala But then if they heard that it was an expensive wine, then they rated it higher. And the thing is, is that on a blind taste test, most people, most average people who are not like wine connoisseurs prefer cheaper wine. 01:36:34.70 Jala So the trick here is if you have a dinner party, Take a cheap wine. Give them the cheap wine that they're going to like better until them it's expensive and they will love it. Tell them it's an expensive wine and they will love it and they won't know and they will enjoy it more, even more than they already do because you serve them the cheap wine that they prefer anyway. 01:36:56.82 Jala so 01:36:58.55 Michael Prehn If there's anything that Jala is famous for, it's for gaslighting our friends at dinner parties. 01:37:02.30 Jala Yeah, I know, right? 01:37:03.76 Michael Prehn It's very well known for it. 01:37:04.34 Jala ah Yeah, I know. 01:37:05.72 Michael Prehn And you too can also fool your friends with our 10 tricks. 01:37:10.11 Jala No, no. And especially since like I'm a wine nerd, there's no way. 01:37:14.32 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 01:37:14.63 Jala No way. I am much more inclined to be like, okay, we're going to taste seven wines, okay? And I'm going to make you eat these things with these wines and you're going to end up appreciating this. I promise. you know No, really guys, it's okay. Red wine is great because nobody I know likes red wine. 01:37:32.61 Michael Prehn Well, I'll come over to Texas. I like our red wine and white wine. 01:37:36.27 Jala ah Oh, yay. Okay, yes, then we can go we can go to Messina half together and go have some wine. So yeah, um let's transition to talking about flavor. So we've covered all of the senses of flavor and kind of a little bit more about the real experience that flavor is because I'm sure there's a lot of people who are listening who are like, 01:37:53.93 Jala you What do you mean flavor is the all the senses and the friends we made along the way that's bullshit You know, but no really it is. It really is guys. So let's talk about flavor though. Let's talk about talking about flavor We have separate nouns for taste and flavor, and we usually use them over lappingly all the time. 01:38:08.62 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:38:13.59 Jala um And usually people say taste when they refer to sweet, sour, salty, bitter, blah, blah, blah. You know, we already know that. But we also use um the the taste and flavor interchangeably to refer to the bigger picture, the whole jelly bean, if you will. So ah we say the dinner tasted good, and we mean a lot more than that because it's not just that the taste on the tongue was this, but also because of all the other experiences of that flavor. you know um But we don't have 01:38:47.22 Jala very many words to talk about this. We have savor, but that doesn't help um in all situations because that usually means that you are eating it with great pleasure and just like taking your time with it and stuff. so like you know that Say, for example, nobody's going to say, I savored dinner and I didn't like it. like That's not a thing. 01:39:07.75 Michael Prehn Mmhmm, not a thing. 01:39:07.95 Jala you know A lot of different languages lack vocabulary to really um talk about flavor in in you know a broader sense. So um it's it's a thing that causes a lot of confusion where people actually don't understand that flavor is a broader kind of concept. 01:39:28.28 Jala But um putting names to smells, too, is something that humans are absolutely bad at. 01:39:29.05 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:39:32.80 Jala And you mentioned this earlier. It's always like, oh, it smells grassy. It smells lemony. It smells whatever. But like when it comes to visual stuff, we have this whole range of vocabulary. 01:39:45.44 Jala We can tell you it's chartreuse, OK, before we can tell you what it it smells like. right or it tastes like, we usually say, oh, it tastes like something. It's this, it's this, but you know you're it's always a comparison. It's not that we have a word for it. So it's real weird. 01:40:05.11 Michael Prehn Yeah, smells and flavors very much tend to be ah comparative, which is a limiting factor in our language. I run into it very frequently with clients. ah They're describing the kind of product that we would they would like us to invent, and they put things in their forms like, we want it to taste good. 01:40:24.56 Michael Prehn And it's like, yes. 01:40:26.25 Jala Yeah. 01:40:27.26 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's that's the plan, but I'm going to need more to go off of than that. So like ah what I learned early in my career is to approach it similar to an artist asked for references like, do you want it to taste kind of like this other famous food product? 01:40:43.26 Jala Right. 01:40:43.65 Michael Prehn And if you could change a component of the flavor of that famous food food product, how would you do that? You know, things of that nature. There's a whole complicated series of funnels that you have to kind of run this information through to really pin down what people are describing. 01:41:00.34 Jala Absolutely. and um So circling back to the wine though, because you know we were talking about that for a little bit, what's interesting is that tests show that wine experts' noses are not any better than anybody else's noses. ah They have the same odor receptors or not. you know like They have their own unique palette of odor receptors, but ah they have approximately the same number of active ones as anyone else. The difference is that they have more practice at noticing what the smells are and putting into words what they're smelling. It's kind of like until I was actively cooking and trying to recreate foods that I had had in a restaurant or you know that were pre-packaged and I wanted to make a healthier, fresh version at home without as much salt or something in it, um you know and all the preservatives and whatnot, 01:41:49.99 Jala at that point when I started dedicating my time to trying to figure out what's in a thing, like I suddenly became really good at figuring out what was in it. you know Because I was like, oh, is it this? And I'd open up my spice spice jar and go, yes, that's exactly it. Or no, that's not quite it. I think it might be closer to this you know and and just going around and you you know yeah what I was doing there with those spice jars is essentially what sommeliers are doing when they're trying to learn how to talk about wine. 01:42:18.73 Jala They get a whole smell set of these little bottles of scents and they have to sniff them so they can identify those sniff you know those the scents when they're smelling a wine. 01:42:30.35 Jala And that's what I was doing as well. 01:42:31.39 Michael Prehn Right. 01:42:32.27 Jala I was taking all my spice jars and going, which one of these are you? 01:42:33.37 Michael Prehn Mhm. 01:42:36.25 Jala yeah So. 01:42:38.63 Michael Prehn This is a fun experiment for the listeners at home, but if you're ever having a little bit of difficulty pinning down what something actually tastes like, like sometimes if you ask people in the street, what does time actually taste like? What does rosemary taste like? You can do what I call the broth test, which is essentially you mix it with a fatty solution of some kind, olive oil. 01:42:59.96 Michael Prehn will work although it's a little bit too strong so i prefer vegetable oil and then like some kind of uh stock or broth and then put like a ton of whatever that flavoring is in there and the reason why you want the fat and the liquid from the stock is because different flavor compounds dissolve into fat or liquid. Typically you cover most of them if you have both. So then you can just try ah this flavor of the thing kind of in a vacuum or as much as possible anyway and kind of put a pen on what it actually tastes like. 01:43:33.40 Jala Right. And, um, that's something that we had talked about. Cause I'm like, yeah, I will do sort of that thing, but not exactly. Like I haven't been adding the oil to it or anything, but that is a very good point. 01:43:44.47 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:43:44.90 Jala And that's something that I found in my research as well, uh, is of course, you know, like certain flavor compounds tend to open up, uh, in different situations. So like, that's, that's why certain flavors only come out in certain dishes. 01:43:55.71 Michael Prehn Right. 01:43:58.79 Jala If you do X thing, that's why all those ingredients are in there, you know? So so, yeah, um it's interesting because like when you think about something like the taste of ripe strawberries slathered with vanilla laced whipped cream, you can think about it. 01:44:03.65 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:44:16.93 Jala But then actually all that you really taste is sweet and maybe a little bit of sour from the berries, depending upon how ripe they are. And everything else is smell. The experience in the side of your nose. 01:44:29.40 Jala But it seems like it's a taste. experienced in the mouth. And then we also say that berries smell sweet, even though sweet is, you know, like the one thing that we're not actually smelling. So ah we use these words so interchangeably that it's really easy to confuse them. But what's cool is um words also have flavors to them. 01:44:53.85 Jala So if you hear something, uh, spiky sounding like Kiki, people associate that with a bitter flavor and a rounder sounding word like Boba with sweet stuff. So other researchers have shown that people expect a mythical ice cream called frosh to taste richer than a creamier one or richer and creamier than one that's called fresh. 01:45:20.90 Jala Frish would be probably more like tart, like a fruit or something instead of frosh, which would be, you know, with that rounded sound to it rather than that, uh, pointed sharp, sharp sound, uh, gives you an anticipation, right? 01:45:31.68 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:45:37.71 Jala So. 01:45:38.11 Michael Prehn Yeah, it does. I have long held that the U is the least ah palatable vowel. So for a fun experiment, replace vowels in any product that you like with a U and it will sound way worse. 01:45:51.36 Jala Kooka Koola? 01:45:51.35 Michael Prehn like ah coookca-cola Yeah, we do a Sprut. We talk about Sprut at the house a lot. 01:45:56.65 Jala Oh yeah. 01:45:59.54 Michael Prehn Or Shrump. Like Shrump. Good. Shrump. I don't know about that. 01:46:02.66 Jala and No. Yeah. 01:46:04.52 Michael Prehn i could um I could write a treatise on how this plays into menu design for restaurants and things like that. believe me, you when you own a restaurant, you spend a lot, a lot of time thinking about and designing the words that describe your food on your menu. And a lot of it is subliminal, but it all kind of adds up, which is why, you know, we use words like kicking ah for foods because that tends to um emphasize like a savory or a rich flavor to something in people's minds. 01:46:38.27 Jala Mm hmm. So it's interesting too, because um when you're sensing flavor, a lot of times having a little bit of something bad makes the good thing stand out more. 01:46:51.99 Jala So um say, for example, wine without a little bit of bitterness to it isn't necessarily as good or chocolate without a little bit of bitterness is not as good because it's not as nuanced. Right. Like what you're looking for there is just something some kind of comparison point. So you can have like um more to it than just sweet or just fruity or whatever the thing is. 01:47:18.64 Jala um But then, too, basic tastes interact with each other. So salt suppresses our perception of bitterness, and sweet and bitter suppress each other as well. 01:47:31.21 Jala So depending upon the types of things that you're putting together in a dish, you know um that's a thing. Now, sweet and bitter, that's actually something that ah came up in the dish that Dave and I made for this past weekend. 01:47:42.56 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:47:44.47 Jala So um we were trying to do a quick and easy meal prep so that you know because we're only here for a few days and then we are gone for part of the week. And so we were grabbing some rice as a base. okay ah We had some tempeh that we needed to use. Now tempeh for people who don't know is a fermented soybean thing. 01:48:06.34 Jala it's kind of It's not like tofu texture wise or anything, but think about tofu. It's like fermented soybeans. um They have a little bit of a bitter taste to them because they are fermented. um But ah we had some tempeh. 01:48:16.86 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:48:19.88 Jala We needed to use it. And I'm like, okay, let's put some chickpeas, roast some chickpeas in the air fryer. Let's get some Brussels sprouts. and put those in there. And we're going to use this smoky whiskey glaze sauce that has like a bit of sweetness to it. And we use that on the tempeh and ah drizzled it a little bit onto the Brussels sprouts that I sliced and then put in the air fryer. And then, you know, like I made a comparable spice mix that mimics some of those kind of like meteor tastes 01:48:52.50 Jala not and nothing sweet, but meatier tastes and stuff that were in the glaze and put that on the chickpeas when I put them in there. And it turned out great. And the reason why is because there's that sweetness and, you know, some of that umami flavor because like tempeh and stuff is really low fat. 01:49:03.95 Michael Prehn Yes. 01:49:09.48 Jala So you need that kind of like um 01:49:12.31 Michael Prehn Yes. 01:49:13.19 Jala fuller, fuller flavor from that sauce. And um then it also had, you know, just like the, that kind of element to it to balance out the lighter fat content and also the bitterness from like that tempeh, you know, and from those greens a little bit. So. 01:49:32.37 Michael Prehn Similar to ah salt, sugar is also a highly hydrophilic compound. So it will also draw out kind of the flavors in even savory dishes and ah you know sweet and bitter counterposing each other or bitter and salty. 01:49:42.82 Jala Mmhmm. 01:49:49.53 Michael Prehn This is a part of the famous grapefruit topping, right? It's like the brown sugar. It's because the ah slight bitterness from the caramelized sugars and the sweetness from the sugar sugar ah kind of helps drown out the extreme bitterness of grapefruits. um Similarly, try this experiment at home, kids. ah Brew yourself a cup of black coffee, ah even if you don't like black coffee, and put just a couple grains of salt in it, just three or four tops, right? It's not going to be enough for you to actually taste it. 01:50:22.99 Michael Prehn But what you'll find is that the black coffee tastes much, much less better than it would otherwise. It's a really fun trick, I think. 01:50:33.56 Jala That's cool. So, so yeah, there's this whole wild thing that happened um called the House of Wolf, where there were some some experimental chefs doing some some interesting things. 01:50:35.14 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:50:48.73 Jala So um say, for example, you would pay the X amount of money and then you go for this weird dining experience, right? And it is an experience for real. You enter the room, you're greeted by the sight of bread rolls dangling by strings from helium balloons floating at the ceiling. And then you're instructed to put in earplugs and eat your roll off the string without using your hands So it's like bobbing for apples in the air, except it's rolls. And while you're eating it, um you are hearing the crunch of the crust magnified by the earplugs. And then um in the printed menu, it says, can you hear the taste? 01:51:28.04 Jala because they she's isolating and you know amplifying this one sense. So then in the next course, you have a blindfold. And then you get a cracker topped with warm goat cheese with rosemary and roasted red peppers. And after your first bite, you remove the blindfold and see that the rosemary and peppers aren't on the cracker at all. They were wafted under your nose as you ate a cracker in unflavored cheese. 01:51:55.25 Jala So then she says, can you see the taste? Because again, like those scents will alter our perception of the food and we will taste the smells. So ah on the next round, then you get a salmon just ah sashimi and a syringe filled with liquid. And then following instructions, you inject the fish with the liquid, which turns out to be Um, a PD scotch whiskey and magically the aroma of Pete smoke from the whiskey transforms the flavor from raw fish into smoked salmon. Can you smell the taste? The menu asks, and then you have a palate cleanser. 01:52:36.23 Jala And then you have your main course, which is a classic loin of venison with mushrooms, prunes, and wild cherries. And then instead of a fork, you're given a tree branch as long as your arm with the thick end carved into a forked prong. 01:52:48.11 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:52:51.22 Jala And then you're supposed to spear the meat with the branch to eat it. And it says, can you feel the taste? And then the final course is a sonic cake pop, a spherical chocolate brownie on a lollipic lollipop stick, and it's served with a telephone number. You pull out your cell phone, dial the number, and hear instructions to press one for bitter or two for sweet. And depending on your choice, you will hear a rumble or a high whine, and the sound makes your dessert taste either bitter or sweet. 01:53:25.81 Jala And then the the little menu says, can you dial a taste? Wild stuff. 01:53:33.20 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it ah the same as I did with Berkeley I would walk into this room be like there are way too many kinks on display here Like I I i gotta go. 01:53:41.43 Jala Right. 01:53:43.95 Michael Prehn I'm not I can't handle Right 01:53:45.13 Jala I know. Well, and that's the thing. This is what this is. And I mentioned this earlier, this is culinary artists doing artists shit, right? That's what this is. These are art majors, but they're cooks, they're chefs. 01:54:00.33 Jala They are they are crafting meals and experiences around meals, but they're really artists in their soul. um And I'm not saying that cooking isn't in art because it very much is. 01:54:12.07 Jala ah Chef, chefing, you know, chefing as a verb ah that is does definitely and an art form. But, um you know, the art as in the way that we think of gallery artists, you know, painters and those types of damn people. 01:54:25.73 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:54:28.48 Jala So. as she says as a painter, but so right, right. 01:54:32.26 Michael Prehn I was about to say, I was like, okay, pot kettle, come on. 01:54:37.21 Jala Well, okay. Here's the thing. Even when I was in the gallery scene, I was also very much like all these people are fucking weird. I don't even know. 01:54:45.71 Michael Prehn here Yeah. 01:54:45.81 Jala I don't understand. 01:54:47.06 Michael Prehn Well, yeah, me me as someone who works with information technology very often, side eyes, other IT guys pretty strongly. 01:54:47.78 Jala So. 01:54:56.72 Jala Yeah, yeah. So ah moving right along though, yeah, you can waft a scent under your nose and it changes the flavor of the thing. So ah sugar, if you're eating some sugar, if somebody has caramel scented something around you, the sugar tastes sweeter to you. 01:55:14.20 Jala And that's partially because of our and anticipation. And it's a cultural thing because for other cultures, a caramel kind of smell can be something associated with a the caramelization that happens when you're browning a meat or something in a savory kind of situation instead. So, um you know, that can change the anticipation of flavor, actually. So, you know, say, for example, 01:55:41.49 Jala There's an almond aroma that's used in some pastries and stuff that to enhance sweet tastes for Westerners. But for Japanese folks, ah that kind of thing enhances ah umami taste to them because that's ah an ingredient that's found in pickles for them. 01:56:01.11 Jala So, you know, um it's it's an interesting thing where like, you know, the anticipation and the actual experience is also culturally dependent. 01:56:01.29 Michael Prehn the 01:56:10.02 Jala So. 01:56:10.69 Michael Prehn Yeah, famously Jordan almonds have never sold well in any Asian culture because that just doesn't appeal to the tastes that they grew up with. 01:56:22.25 Jala So yeah, and um it's interesting because flavors map onto individual neurons. So ah what's cool and bad about this at the same time is that ice cream tastes so much better the first bite that you take than the 20th bite. 01:56:39.02 Jala because particular flavor neurons get tired after responding to the flavor over and over again. 01:56:39.12 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:56:46.38 Jala What is what this is called is sensory-specific satiety. So it's actually something that's been measured in monkey brains, and it shows that repeated doses of a particular flavor combination provoke smaller and smaller responses from that neuron, that flavor-specific neuron in the brain. 01:57:05.20 Jala So ah the less of a reward you get, the more you eat a bit, no matter how many more calories you pack in of it. So like if you eat, you know, a small bit of some chips and you're like, oh, these are so good. I'm going to eat more. And then you just keep eating and you just can't stop. You're just you're kind of like. 01:57:25.50 Jala chasing the high of that first taste, but none of the rest of the bag is going to fulfill that taste because your sensing neuron is so tired already of the flavor. So like you eat the whole bag and go, damn, I ate a whole bag. But you never get that satisfaction because that satiety had actually happened like a lot sooner. 01:57:49.10 Michael Prehn Yep. I've also heard it referred to as flavor exhaustion. 01:57:52.54 Jala Yes. 01:57:53.31 Michael Prehn ah And it is a thing that factors into making plates at restaurants. You tend to put the most strongly flavored thing on top as a garnish for a lot of dishes because it helps set the tone for the experience of the rest of the meal. 01:58:09.71 Michael Prehn And then typically at the bottom of a com composed plate, you have something like potatoes or grits that don't really have much of a flavor identity of their own. 01:58:18.69 Jala Right. So there's also the fact that we've had a lot of leaching of flavor in our grocery stores as well. And I know for example, that you might love your heirloom tomatoes. 01:58:33.87 Michael Prehn Oh yeah. 01:58:35.04 Jala So yeah, the problem about tomatoes is that um they have basically the the long and short of it, and this happens for basically a whole bunch of different types of produce, is that When it comes to fruits, they are picked when they're too green and then they're shipped and gassed and things like that to keep them from spoiling. 01:58:59.71 Jala And so they don't have a chance to ripen fully. And some types of fruits can ripen over time thereafter, like bananas, for example. 01:59:10.48 Jala But others, they don't ripen after they're picked. 01:59:11.10 Michael Prehn right 01:59:14.68 Jala So when you get something like a strawberry and it has those white shoulders on it, that's not a fully ripened strawberry. And that strawberry is going to taste tart. It's not going to taste as sweet as a fully red strawberry would. And like if you have a strawberry plant at home and you can pick it yourself, it's going to always taste sweeter and better than the one in the supermarket. 01:59:37.48 Jala um 01:59:37.56 Michael Prehn Yeah, there is a primacy that has been given to the modern food service infrastructure towards ah transportability versus flavor nutritional content. It's just the nature of the modern world, unfortunately. But that's why you hear people talk about how much their homegrown produce is 100 times better than what it is in the store. And it probably is because they can actually let it ripen appropriately because they're going to eat it basically as soon as they pick it probably. 02:00:06.60 Jala Well, and there's also the fact that when you come to commercialized agriculture, none of the farmers are getting paid for the flavor of their stuff. 02:00:18.43 Jala They're getting paid for the volume, for how beautiful it looks. 02:00:18.88 Michael Prehn Right. 02:00:23.15 Jala Is it the right color? Is it the right shape? That kind of thing. so you know How many can you produce? so you know I don't know how many people out there are familiar with gardening, but if you have a plant and it has 7,000 fruits on it versus like three fruits. 02:00:40.90 Jala The taste of those three fruits is going to be so much better than the taste of the 7,000 because all of the sugars and other stuff like that, all of the attention that the plant is giving is going into those three fruits rather than the 7,000. You get it diluted the more and more production you've got. The higher the yield, the less of a flavor you're going to get in any one particular thing you're getting off of that plant. 02:01:08.60 Jala So in modern agriculture, because that emphasizes the visuals and the volume, you don't get the flavor that you do. That's why an heirloom tomato variety is going to be tastier as well. They don't produce nearly as many tomatoes as a commercial variety is, but they're going to have a lot more taste to them because they're not producing 7 million of them. 02:01:31.44 Michael Prehn Right. 02:01:32.78 Jala so 02:01:33.51 Michael Prehn Yeah, absolutely. 02:01:34.73 Jala Yeah, and then too, the nutritional content of food is also decreasing because monocultures and the leaching of the soil and the use of all the chemicals and whatever, like all these different factors, all of these things are are kind of leading into it. Because like um the more nutrients are in a thing that's growing naturally out there in the world, ah the tastier it is, actually, like, you know, when it has all of those nutrients and stuff, there's a richness to the various compounds that are in that thing. 02:02:07.44 Jala And you can taste that. It's kind of like what we were at when I was talking about tasting vitamins. I can taste, you know, is this a store bought or is this one that comes from like, you know, like ah a variety that you don't see in the store? 02:02:13.91 Michael Prehn Right. 02:02:20.43 Jala Well, you can taste the difference between those, you know, and 02:02:23.75 Michael Prehn Yeah, you think about a ah avocado that's kind of pale green in color and not as ripe as you want it to be versus one that's got like that rich dark green color. They're very different experiences when you eat them. 02:02:36.72 Jala Oh, absolutely. And another thing while we're talking about like tomatoes and other types of, uh, produce, uh, volatiles, uh, the scent of a thing that, that, you know, comes out as it continues to ripen slash. 02:02:45.12 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 02:02:52.88 Jala decompose or whatever ah that is the reason why you should never put a tomato in the fridge because tomatoes are always leaking volatiles into the air and you can tell because you can always smell tomatoes right and the. 02:02:55.07 Michael Prehn Right. 02:03:07.60 Michael Prehn Right. 02:03:09.50 Jala like it ends up replenishing that loss by making new ones. So if you chill it, it turns off the enzymes that make the volatiles and one of the peculiarities of the tomato is that the enzymes stay off even after you take the fruit out of the fridge. So the volatile content goes down as mo ah molecules leak out into the air and they aren't replaced which means that tomato that spent time in the fridge tastes less sweet and has less tomato-y flavor in it because it's been in the fridge and it was chilled. 02:03:42.43 Michael Prehn Yep. 02:03:42.70 Jala so 02:03:43.94 Michael Prehn Unfortunately, you know, 95% of commercially grown tomatoes have been in a fridge at some point. 02:03:48.65 Jala Yeah, exactly. 02:03:50.20 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:03:50.59 Jala And that's another thing. That's another reason why you like those commercially grown ones often don't taste as strong. And then two, another thing is a vine ripened tomatoes. 02:04:01.34 Jala Like if they are sold in the store on the vine, those are the ones to get because most of the volatiles leak out of the stem scar at the top of the tomato. And this is true for like all of the different types of stuff. 02:04:15.25 Jala So like when it has that stem that's, that's important to leave it there. So it'll be a little bit more flavorful if it has the stem. 02:04:20.83 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:04:24.92 Jala So, so yeah. How about you tell us a little bit about why flavor matters so much. 02:04:33.45 Michael Prehn So the book that we've read here um ah says that people turned out to be pretty lousy at consciously guessing how many calories of food contained. Their unconscious brains, however, did much better. Their brain activity matched the real caloric content of foods, not their estimate of the calories. The interesting result, though, showed up in people's willingness to pay for the food. You'd think that when people are consciously deciding how much they want to pay for a snack, they base that decision on their conscious estimate of calorie count. 02:05:06.56 Michael Prehn But in fact, the amount that they paid was much closer to match the actual calories, the information accurately assessed by their unconscious. ah the more that you chew, the more you're exposed to food flavors, and therefore the quicker that satiety may set in. Liquid foods such as soft drinks, juices, and beer go down much more quickly than chew and swallow type foods as much as 10 times faster. ah We get less exposure to the flavor in the mouth, which is may explain why we tend to over-consume liquid calories. Guilty. 02:05:41.34 Michael Prehn We don't trigger our internal calorie meter as strongly ah as calories from solid foods do and in fact people find identical amounts of soup more filling if they eat it with a spoon slowly than if they drink it from a mug more quickly. 02:05:55.92 Jala ah Right. And so, uh huh. 02:05:56.55 Michael Prehn Yeah this is This is 100% the reason why people are more comfortable with paying drastically more food for restaurant or more money for restaurant cooked food versus a similar or identical plate of food that they could make at their house much cheaper. 02:06:15.37 Michael Prehn is because restaurant food tends to be loaded with butter and with carbs and fried things and things like that. And so subconsciously, we have a much more satisfied feeling to it. 02:06:28.27 Michael Prehn um Even if we could make something very similar at home, we're probably not packing as much butter into it as an Applebee's does, you know? 02:06:35.49 Jala yeah Right. Right. And so part of this is that that's kind of interesting too, is, um, so, so the part about the chewing, this is why all the processed foods are as easy to eat as they are. 02:06:49.10 Jala They are trying not to make you chew. 02:06:49.95 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:06:51.46 Jala They're trying to make it very easy to eat so that you eat more so that you buy more and so on and so forth in this, this, you know, long standing cycle. 02:07:02.54 Jala So ah when you have stuff like fresh fruits and vegetables and you are making your food from scratch at home and things like that, you know, like a ah solid slab of steak rather than getting, you know, like the little tiny bits in the frozen meal that you buy from the store, you know, like the chewing experience there, the amount of time you spend chewing is a lot different, you know, when you're making stuff from scratch at home versus if you're buying a pre-made food. 02:07:24.04 Michael Prehn right 02:07:28.48 Michael Prehn Right. 02:07:29.48 Jala And that also adds to your satiety. That's why when people cook at home, they usually end up, you know, doing a little bit better by the calories, as long as they're not using everything pre-made. So. 02:07:41.95 Michael Prehn Right. Yeah, exactly. Correct. 02:07:45.72 Jala So yeah, ah we want the flavors, and we mentioned this sooner, that are accompanied by a dose of calories and ignore the flavors that aren't accompanied by that dose of calories. And this happens mostly without our conscious awareness of it. So there's there's that for sure. And, you know, we learned that the flavor the flavors mark the foods that we eat in a way that, you know, we learn to identify with those flavors and and kind of um take that into ourselves as part of like who who we are really in a lot of ways. ah This learning starts before birth because flavor molecules from food eaten by a mom, pregnant mom, passes into amniotic fluid and is ingested by the developing fetus. So the fetus is sampling whatever the mom eats and later on recognizes and likes those flavors. 02:08:40.51 Jala So, over and over again, researchers have shown that babies who are exposed to flavors ranging from anise, which is like that licorice taste. to garlic through the mother's diet prefer those foods when they first encounter them directly. 02:08:50.18 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:08:55.83 Jala In short, we like what our mothers liked to eat. Formula-fed infants, I'm one of those ah because I was allergic to milk, ah don't get the same exposure to the flavors of the foods their mothers eat. 02:09:05.48 Michael Prehn ah 02:09:09.30 Jala And instead, they get the exact same set of flavors with every bottle unless the parents switch brands from now and then. So a formula fed infant then arrives at weaning with little or no experience of the flavors he and he or she will soon experience firsthand. 02:09:24.85 Jala And I also happen to be a super taster. So when I was little, I was really picky because I had no experience with any of these tastes and I was sensitive to everything. 02:09:30.90 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:09:36.75 Michael Prehn Sure, and they didn't really talk about this in the body of research, but another reason why kids have a tendency to be picky or to favor plainly flavored things like chicken nuggets versus something that might have a little more punch to it. 02:09:36.79 Jala so 02:09:51.94 Michael Prehn is because you're born with significantly more taste buds than you have as an adult person. 02:09:55.06 Jala Mm hmm. Yep. 02:09:56.86 Michael Prehn So a lot of the time, something like curry, my favorite food, which has tons of competing flavors, is not going to be palatable to a kid because it's as subtle as a fireworks display for them. 02:10:08.73 Jala Right. 02:10:09.03 Michael Prehn They just want chicken tenders because it's it's not going to be overwhelming in that way. 02:10:13.43 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. So yeah, if you're a parent or you're interested in becoming a parent, the lesson here is ah specifically the mom, you want to eat what you want your kid to eat because they're going to learn to like whatever you're eating. 02:10:30.37 Jala when you are growing that little human. so um And it's it's the same thing as like ah when you grow up and you grew up eating a thing or didn't grow up eating a thing. That changes whether or not you find a food to be really tasty or not. like For example, before I was vegan, you know i people would be like, oh, you're Cuban. you must have You must love seafood because a lot of Cuban stuff is seafood. i My dad does not like seafood. He has never liked seafood. 02:11:00.26 Jala And so we never ate seafood when I was growing up at all, not once, not once. So like the few times that I ever had it, I was like, oh my God, this is terrible. 02:11:06.12 Michael Prehn Ah 02:11:09.36 Jala Why would anybody ever eat this? 02:11:11.72 Michael Prehn so 02:11:11.95 Jala Because you know I didn't grow up eating it and it was very foreign to me. The textures and the smells were not things that I was like, oh, I'm i'm down for this. This was like, Oh, and depending upon the type of fish too, it would have a really strong smell and a strong, strong taste, especially. 02:11:27.84 Jala So, you know, like I, I did eventually get to the point where there were some types of seafood I could eat, but by and large, I was very select things that I could eat. 02:11:28.97 Michael Prehn Sure. 02:11:38.36 Jala And then I went vegetarian and then I went vegan and then I never had to worry about it again. 02:11:43.75 Michael Prehn Yep, absolutely. 02:11:44.79 Jala So. 02:11:45.32 Michael Prehn There's also kind of an experience thing with this where you have what I call the Long John Silver effect, which is many people who do not like seafood. It's because the first time they tried it was at a Long John Silver. 02:11:56.94 Jala Yeah. 02:11:57.75 Michael Prehn And, you know, that's less common nowadays with kind of the popularization of ah boutique restaurants and more people becoming foodies. But if the first thing you have is a filet of fish, you're not going to have good associations with seafood at all. 02:12:12.41 Michael Prehn um I come from a family of absolute like food freaks like everyone in my family's like that, not just me. So from before birth, we were all ingesting all kinds of crazy stuff because that's what our parents ate and we're very excited about. 02:12:30.68 Michael Prehn And it's funny now that I have nieces ah seeing that reflected in them, like I have a niece whose two favorite foods are capers and goyoza, which is not normal cuisine for a kiddo like that, but that's, you know, she saw us eating it and figured it must be good too. 02:12:51.40 Jala That's pretty good. That's pretty good. But um yeah, and this is the same thing that I tell people a lot when it comes to vegan food, for example, because a lot of people are immediately like, I just can't do tofu. 02:13:04.65 Jala And it's like, bro, have you had good tofu? I mean, like, if you don't know what number one, if you don't know how to prepare, hair of the tofu or if you're just getting it from some place that is not a vegan restaurant, let's be real. 02:13:17.52 Jala um If this is not a vegan restaurant and they have a dish with tofu in it, I'd be pretty sketch you know skeptical of that tofu ever tasting good um because like most people who aren't vegan don't know how to prepare tofu right. 02:13:18.21 Michael Prehn Right. 02:13:25.75 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:13:31.36 Jala so um 02:13:31.90 Michael Prehn Yeah, typically there's a token vegan menu item that's kind of thrown out there and the restaurant doesn't put a lot of thought into it because it's not their primary demographic. 02:13:41.24 Jala Absolutely. But man, you go to some vegan restaurants, like straight up vegan restaurants, and there is some fantastic food in there. I will tell you, and it doesn't matter if you're a vegan or not, you will enjoy these. 02:13:50.56 Michael Prehn Oh yeah. 02:13:53.86 Jala And I know that because every time I have taken an omnivore to a vegan restaurant, ah the my favorite ones that is very specifically, um they are just like, oh my God, this is so good. 02:14:01.78 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:14:04.89 Jala you know I'm like, yes, it is really good. you know Oh, I could eat like this if all the vegan cooking was like this. well Guess what? It can be, you know? 02:14:13.00 Michael Prehn It can be. 02:14:14.31 Jala I mean, if that's it right, if... 02:14:14.48 Michael Prehn I am a firm believer i'm a firm believer that any food can be good if it's prepared with care and intention. like I think that anything can be made well. 02:14:21.57 Jala Absolutely. 02:14:24.81 Jala Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. And, um you know, for a very long time, um like I was fairly limited in my palette. And then I don't know, somewhere along the line, I also had read that um the average person in America buys like 25 items from the grocery store and it's the same items every week that they buy. 02:14:46.41 Jala And that's those are the 25 items that they eat. 02:14:46.69 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:14:49.05 Jala And there isn't a whole lot of variety there. um What's interesting is that ah kind of like um a conversation that's been going on in the gelatin's place discord recently has been about how games by their nature have limitations to them. 02:15:04.66 Jala And those limitations are what breed the creativity to make the game really good and fun and interesting. You know, like the the limitations breed innovations kind of idea. 02:15:15.85 Jala And um this is something that I can say holds true for my palate and becoming vegan when I became vegan. I opened up to eating all kinds of stuff and I was just wowed when I'm reading this recipe and they're telling me to use dulse flakes and I didn't know what dulse flakes were but I sure did buy some on the internet and then go. 02:15:22.93 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:15:36.06 Jala What is seaweed? What, why am I putting this into this pesto sauce? But then like it turns out, im and I'm like avocados. Okay. But like, and then it turns out amazing. And I'm just like, okay, I don't know what just happened. This is magic. You know, and the first time that I made cashew mozzarella on my counter at home, and I'm like, Oh, I have fermented these cashews. Like I fermented the wheat berries to make the Rejuvalac I have taken the Rejuvalac and I have put it in and followed all these instructions to make these cashews into mozzarella and it's time and I try it and I'm standing in my kitchen and I'm like, oh my God, it's mozzarella and it's cashews. Cashews are magical. I don't know what happened. And then my dad's like, what are you going on about? And my dad is you know like the Cuban one and he's 02:16:23.96 Jala Super like super sketch skeptical about everything vegan he's just like always like oh i don't know about that like he would never eat it if it's if he was told it was vegan but if it wasn't if he wasn't told it was vegan it's fine right. 02:16:38.07 Jala um 02:16:38.83 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:16:39.29 Jala and that kind of guy. But he comes up and he's you know I'm like, this is mozzarella, but it's made of cashews. And he's like, what? And he tries it and he's like, that's good. 02:16:50.24 Jala I'm like, I know. And then he never ate it again because that's my dad. 02:16:54.41 Michael Prehn Yep, creature or habit, I guess. 02:16:54.49 Jala but right Well, it's it's again, it's that anticipation, right? he's You tell him it's vegan, he doesn't like it. 02:17:00.07 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:17:02.33 Jala Tell him it's not vegan and it's fine. He'll eat it and it'll he'll love it and it'll be wonderful. shes 02:17:08.13 Michael Prehn there are There are certain ingredients that I cook with that ah my wife was not a very big fan of, um but typically when I use them, A, I use them sparingly, but B, a lot of the time I won't necessarily mention it because ah it can set a negative expectation as well as a positive one. 02:17:26.06 Jala Right. Right. And that's the thing too, because like, you know, you could say, oh, well that you're gaslighting your wife and Jolla, you're gaslighting your dad. If you're not telling him that is vegan, I'm like, no, this is omission. 02:17:39.39 Jala It's, you know, bending the truth a little by omission, but whatever. 02:17:40.02 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:17:43.57 Jala Uh, anyway, the reason, the reason is like, he 02:17:45.87 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, and in her case, she knows that it kind of like globally that that is occurring, but um isn't really concerned about the specifics. 02:17:51.93 Jala right. 02:17:54.91 Michael Prehn And to be clear, I'm not talking about food allergies or something that's going to cause physical harm to anybody. 02:17:57.72 Jala Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. 02:18:00.57 Michael Prehn You know, it's stuff like sriracha, like not not a big sweet and savory fan, you know, and sriracha has strong elements of both. 02:18:00.60 Jala Yeah. Yeah. 02:18:05.68 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:18:08.74 Michael Prehn So it's like it can be useful culinarily, but you probably don't want it on front street. 02:18:11.60 Jala Yeah. Oh, right, right. And that's the thing too, is like, okay, in my dad's case, does he ultimately care at the end of the day if it's vegan? Like, no. 02:18:21.87 Jala Is that going to cause him a problem if it's vegan? No. um It's not like, you know, like I've seen those videos where it's like, this guy tricked his vegan girlfriend into eating steak or something like that, you know, like that kind of thing. 02:18:34.31 Michael Prehn Right. 02:18:34.41 Jala Like that, that's harmful. You're going against that person's ethics and stuff. No, um like I'm vegan. I buy tamales. I bring them home. I tell them these are the ones that are are, you know, this flavor, this flavor, this flavor. 02:18:48.98 Jala And then he picks it and he eats it. He doesn't ask me if they're vegan and I don't volunteer that it's vegan. And he enjoys the tamales. 02:18:55.62 Michael Prehn Right. 02:18:56.96 Jala And we move on. That's the end of it. 02:18:58.99 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:18:59.67 Jala I'm pretty sure my dad knows that they're vegan because I'm not going to go to a vegan restaurant to pick up tamales and get a steak tamale in there or something. You're not getting real beef, you're getting vegan beef. 02:19:09.12 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:19:11.59 Jala and you know He's fine with that, whatever. so 02:19:16.00 Michael Prehn Yeah. If there aren't any moral, ethical, or dietary compunctions there, it's ah sometimes it's just a better let sleeping dogs lie with that. 02:19:18.42 Jala Right. 02:19:24.93 Jala Yeah, because like, if my mom knows that there's mushrooms in a thing, even if they're ground up and you can't like tell, parse them out specifically from the recipe, she will not touch it if you tell her there's mushrooms. 02:19:36.34 Michael Prehn Right. 02:19:37.71 Jala But if you don't tell her, she will just eat it and like it. And she is not allergic to mushrooms. She just that thinks about mushrooms and is just like, wo you know, so. 02:19:48.06 Michael Prehn Highly device of food. 02:19:49.50 Jala Yeah, well, and then the thing is, this is the kind of thing that parents do to their kids all the time, right? To get them to eat the thing, they just don't tell them that the thing they don't like is in there. 02:19:58.02 Michael Prehn Yep, definitely. 02:19:58.19 Jala yeah this is This is a common gaslighting that we all do to each other every once in a while, you know, to our loved ones. 02:20:06.04 Michael Prehn Again, worlds world's biggest proponent of gaslighting over here, you know? 02:20:10.40 Jala Right? Right? This episode, apparently. 02:20:11.82 Michael Prehn the 02:20:12.84 Jala so But anyway, yeah. So so this is kind of like the the overall idea. there There are some other things in in that said book that I mentioned earlier, ah Flavor by Bob Holmes, where he's talking about the the design of artificial flavors. 02:20:30.49 Jala And the kind of big takeaway from that one section, just to kind of wrap things up, is that In any given actual food, there's so many different compounds and stuff that's in there by nature that when you're making an artificial flavor, you can't put that many, there's thousands and thousands of compounds, like odor compounds and whatever, taste compounds and things. 02:20:53.58 Jala that are in the thing that you're eating. 02:20:54.58 Michael Prehn Right. 02:20:55.54 Jala so like You can't do that. so What do you have to do? You have to, dependent upon the price point of the item, right because like flavoring, the more ingredients and the more complex and the more research goes into the nuance of that flavor, the more expensive it's going to be. 02:21:12.73 Jala so like Everybody can think of a cheap strawberry flavor versus a good strawberry flavor. you know like You can think about that off the top of your head and you can remember instances of when you got a cheap strawberry flavor versus ah a good one. 02:21:21.24 Michael Prehn Yep. 02:21:28.66 Jala And like you know you can make a cheap strawberry flavor out of like three different compounds, but the more nuances you add to it, the more complexity it has and the more real it seems to be to where it doesn't taste as artificial. um you know You might be just fine and dandy with the simplified version, but you know, like dependent upon how how high of a quality of ah a flavoring you want to it, you have these other nuances to add. Like say, for example, if you get like a mango, you get that that sweetness and that kind of um floral element to it. But then if it's a really good mango taste, you'll also get a little bit of the greenness of the rind and stuff like that in that artificial flavoring. 02:22:17.79 Jala And you know like you can tell the steps of quality by the little nuances that you maybe don't realize are there when you're eating the thing, like the actual fruit. 02:22:18.18 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:22:27.51 Jala right But then like when you get these compounds, it'll be there. you know 02:22:34.08 Michael Prehn Yeah, and a lot of that you know comes into conversations when you're commercially preparing this stuff, because ah ultimately designing artificial flavors is a serious loss leader, like you're talking about, depending on the scale of your project, maybe sinking six digits or seven digits into trying to reproduce a flavor. And you got to put all that money down before you see a ah single cent back from it. 02:23:00.37 Michael Prehn um So there are you know companies that are hesitant to spend that amount of money on the front end and they just kind of tell you to slap something together and as long as it's close that's good enough for them. 02:23:12.54 Jala Right. Right. And that's where, you know, like it'll come into just like a whole, a whole slew of different things. And that's also like, when you get those reformulated new and improved kinds of things, that means they might've updated their, their artificial flavorings and stuff. 02:23:24.68 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:23:27.52 Jala And like artificial flavorings get put into everything. I mean, if it's a process thing, it's in everything. 02:23:31.54 Michael Prehn Yes, a hundred percent. 02:23:34.61 Jala They, they have put an artificial flavor into it. I can guarantee you. And they can say it's a natural flavor, quote unquote natural flavor. If it's a like a thing that I think is, if it's derived from, you know, like ah a a plant or something like that, rather than being a chemical. 02:23:52.17 Michael Prehn Yeah, if you can. if you can find it naturally occurring in nature somewhere, which doesn't necessarily mean you're picking it off of a vine somewhere or a tree or a bush, but it can be something like, whoa, we found a mollusk at the bottom of the sea, and if you boil it for three days, then it produces this flavonoid that we need for this thing, you know? 02:23:55.87 Jala Yeah. 02:24:13.28 Jala Right, right. And so like, you know, the quote unquote natural flavors that you get, that's also artificial flavors. it its It's compounds that were made in a lab somewhere ah based off of stuff that you can find in nature rather than stuff that was made 100% in the lab, but it's still the same. It's the same. 02:24:31.53 Michael Prehn Yeah. And that's that's not to say that synthetic flavors can't be good. Like we've been champion championing ah MSG a lot and it has a sense to reputation in some corners of the world. 02:24:36.02 Jala yeah 02:24:43.29 Michael Prehn All that really is is boiled seaweed, essentially. 02:24:45.20 Jala Yep. 02:24:46.02 Michael Prehn You know, they just take a big old pot of seaweed and boil it until it turns into something that kind of looks like salt. That's all MSG is. That's all monosodium glutamate. You know, sounds bad, but I mean, you can just get right out of the ocean pretty much. 02:24:58.02 Jala Yep, it's a natural flavoring. 02:25:02.99 Michael Prehn Yep, it's true. 02:25:03.33 Jala So. So yeah, and you know, like, uh, that's, that's just the thing. And like, I definitely have to go get that Kokumi powder now from the Korean grocery. Cause now I need to know, I need to know what that tastes like. 02:25:12.22 Michael Prehn Oh yeah. 02:25:15.24 Jala Cause that author's description is very confusing. It's cheesy, but it's kind of meaty. And then it's kind of like Dorito, like what is going on? I don't even know. I need to go see. 02:25:25.69 Jala So, so yeah. Uh, have you done the bluing of your tongue test before, Mike? 02:25:31.83 Michael Prehn ah Yes, so it's a little bit of a rite of passage in my field just to kind of see where where you're at. I am absolutely dead down the center on this thing. Like so many ways in my life, I'm 100% average and boring. 02:25:47.42 Jala Far from boring, far from boring, even if you might be in the middle there, so. 02:25:48.31 Michael Prehn sir 02:25:50.86 Michael Prehn Yeah. I'm middle of the road, but that's actually in my field, not necessarily a bad thing because it means that my taste is closest to dead center, which is kind of what you want when you're making commercially prepared products a lot of the time, like you want a mass market. 02:26:05.25 Jala Right. 02:26:06.87 Michael Prehn So it's worked out in my favor for sure. 02:26:10.09 Jala Right. Like if I were in there, I'd be like, Oh my God, it's, I cannot even with this, this, and you're just like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Joel is like, what? 02:26:18.19 Michael Prehn Yep. 02:26:18.36 Jala You know, like, no, I can't, I can't even. So for sure. 02:26:23.66 Michael Prehn Yep, it's something you have to account for and some very high-end facilities far beyond my reach, they will actually test for it and their focus groups as well, ah just to get a sense of what kind of ah sample they're actually getting for stuff. 02:26:39.08 Jala Right, right. So um about the artificial flavors, one other thing I want to say that there are just like a few flavor houses. There's flavor houses from which everybody gets all of their flavors. 02:26:49.92 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 02:26:52.34 Jala And most of the time, these flavor houses are very, very like secretive about their formulas and stuff because, right, it takes so much time and effort. to you know create this flavor for the X or Y customer and everything. And then it's that customer's proprietary blend. right So like you can't just give away the the secrets. right you know like that's That's the magic trick of the the artificial flavor world. 02:27:19.05 Jala so 02:27:20.42 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, you look at something like, again, Frito-Lay, which has been my punching bag tonight, but um their formulas for their potato chips, very plain food potato chips, what's the big deal? They guard those things with the lives of everyone that works for Frito-Lay. like It would be a serious problem if any of that stuff got leaked at a high level. 02:27:42.93 Michael Prehn because they've invested billions of dollars into formulating it a very specific way. You know, if you ever want to see a chef cry, tell them to reproduce Flamin' Hot Cheetos like it is. 02:27:52.71 Jala Oh my God. Flamin' Hot Cheetos. You know about that guy who pretended that he was the inventor of the Flamin' Hot Cheetos, right? It's a whole thing. 02:28:01.17 Michael Prehn No, I haven't heard this story. 02:28:02.18 Jala Okay. Well, um, there's a whole scam goddess episode about that scam goddess being a podcast I listened to. I'm going to have to put it in the show notes for folks and I'll have to send it to you. 02:28:09.22 Michael Prehn OK. 02:28:11.47 Jala And when we're done here, Mike, so you can hear about the, the Flamin' Hot Cheeto man. But, um, yeah, I will, I will. 02:28:16.00 Michael Prehn Please do. 02:28:18.12 Jala So yeah, like it's, it's a whole, whole interesting kind of world you've got going there. But, um, Yeah, is there anything else about flavor kind of broadly or any little weird anecdote or other tidbits you want to add out there, Mike? Or are are we good and wrapped up? 02:28:36.83 Michael Prehn No, I guess I would say in summary, you know, it's important to consider all five of your senses when it comes to flavor. If you're throwing at a dinner party for friends or doing some kind of special occasion, hey, we got Thanksgiving coming up, right? ah Consider working one of those non-critical, quote unquote, ah flavor elements into your dinner. ah You know, something as simple as a flambéd dish on the side can really make a splash at a Thanksgiving dinner. 02:29:06.40 Michael Prehn It's ah all part of the human experience, all five senses. 02:29:09.63 Jala Right. And even something simple like, Oh, I'm going to light this candle that has a specific kind of scent holiday center, whatever, we'll make a difference. Or let me play something in some music in the background. That's whatever it'll, it'll make a difference into how that, that food is experienced. So. 02:29:27.30 Jala Yeah. So, um, we will both of us be talking more about flavor in the future and you will hear more about the crafting of flavor, which is Mike's specialty. Uh, but that will be forthcoming in the future. It won't be the year of our Lord 2024. Uh, you can put a pin in that. We'll get back to it as usual with me. It just kind of depends on the schedule and how things fall out for everybody, but, uh, that'll be coming down the pipes in the future. So. 02:29:55.27 Jala Without further ado Mike where on the internet can people find you if you might be found anywhere, sir 02:30:02.14 Michael Prehn Sure. I have a fairly small online presence, but probably the best way to reach me is on BlueSky. I'm at michaelprehn.bsky.social. If you're not familiar with the app, it's basically a Twitter clone, um except with much nicer people on average, I find. So I enjoy it quite a lot. If you haven't joined, make an account and then ask me a bunch of random questions about food and I will try my best to answer them. I love talking about food in all its forms. 02:30:32.03 Jala Yes, food forever. And I am Jalachan, everywhere that I might be found, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and all of the others. 02:30:34.79 Michael Prehn Okay. 02:30:43.19 Jala So until next time, take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]