The Neurophysiological Basis of Flavor - Suffolk Community College - Culinary Arts Program -

Dr. Russ L’HommeDieuDPTDr. Russ L’HommeDieu

DPT

Dr. Russ L’HommeDieuDPT


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Always Know the Question

Why are you here?

The Obesity Epidemic

The food industry has gotten a bad rap for

their role in the obesity crisis.


The food industry has gotten a bad rap for

their role in the obesity crisis.

Do they deserve it?


Good Chefs can no longer get by on loading food up with fat, sugar and salt and

Great chefs NEVER have. ~Dr. Russ L’HommeDieu

Always Know the Question

How does “Flavor”

Differ from

“Taste”?

“Taste” Molecules sensed by receptors on the tongue.The neurons of the different tastes go right to the brainstem and are hardwired to emotions.

a. Saltiness is essential for maintaining salty body fluids..

b. Sweetness is innate in all mammals, because of sugar’s high energy.

c. Sourness warns of food that may have gone bad.

d. Bitterness warns of toxic substances that should be rejected.

e. Umami or Savoriness is a meaty quality, signaling a high-energy food.

The problem is that “taste” does not account for all the flavor that we can experience.

Outdated

126 Combinations?

With only 126 “tastes”, how do you explain . . .

Wine Flavor Coffee Flavor

“Flavor” Taste impulses proceed further to their cortical areas, where they interact with all the other sensory representations at the core of flavor.

(Adapted from G. M. Shepherd, Smell images and the flavour system in the human brain, Nature 444 [2006]: 316–321)

While taste is a sensation of the tongue, flavor is a

multisensory perceptionwhich includes

taste, touch, smell, vision, emotion, hearing and even PAIN.

Taste is a

Sensation

Flavor is

Mulitsensory

Flavor is a

Perception

While foods do contain molecules that provide us with flavor, the flavor is not in the food, it’s a perception that originates in our brain.

Why Does FLAVOR

Matter?

Flavor Matters Because

It drives

human

behavior

Why Does FLAVOR Matter?

“The human craving for flavor has been a largely unacknowledged and unexamined force in history. Royal empires have been built, unexplored lands have been traversed. . .”

Eric Schlosser, in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal


“. . . great religions and philosophies have been forever changed by the spice trade. In 1492 Columbus set sail to find seasoning.”



“Today the influence of flavor in the world market-place is no less decisive. The rise and fall of corporate empires—of soft drink companies, snack food companies, and fast food chains—is frequently determined by how their products taste.”


The Perception of FlavorTaste

Smell

Temperature

Sight

Sound

Pain

The Perception of Flavor: Smell

Two Types of Smell

Orthonasal & Retronasal

The Perception of Flavor Deconstructed: Smell

• Orthonasal

From Monell Chemical Senses Center


• For flavor to be perceived, molecules need to reach the olfactory epithelium, located in the nasal cavity. This can be achieved through orthonasal (sniff) or retronasal (mouth) airways.

• The intensity perceived will depend on the number of molecules that reach the receptor cells.

• Which type of “smell” do you think is most important to flavor?


•Whereas taste is analytic, smell is synthetic.

• What do you suppose this means?


• It means that smells combine and a mixture of several smells makes a new unified smell.

• Knowing what you now know about smell and flavor, how might this relate to the complexity of human flavor perception?

Smell: Intramodal Enhancement

• When two weak flavor molecules which cannot be sensed by themselves (sub-threshold), but together they can be perceived.

• This works for taste and smell together. A weak smell and weak taste can be subthreshold by themselves, but together they can be sensed.

• This usually only works if they complement each other.

• This congruency may be innate, or it may be learned.

Congruency = Pairing

The Flavor Thesaurus:

Pairings, Recipes and Ideas

for the Creative Cook

The Special Case of Cilantro

Love It! Cilantro is characterized by fresh, green and woody notes. But in place of parsley’s cold-rain flavor, cilantro is more redolent of the monsoon, with hints of warm earthiness and fruity citrus peel. It has a bittersweet taste, and is often used as a garnish, partly because its flavor isn’t heat-stable and therefore needs to be added at the end of cooking , and partly because it has so many useful tempering qualities. Cilantro calms saltiness, deodorizes fishiness, cuts fattiness and lends a cooling note to hot, spicy food. Segnit, Niki (2010-12-01). The Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas for the Creative Cook

Hate It! “I cannot even describe the way it tastes, it isn't too hot, spicy, bland, soapy to me, just foul. There are no words.” -Katherine Melbourne

Australia

“The first time I encountered cilantro, I thought something had gone bad in my salad dressing. It was disgusting. But my friends were all gushing about how delicious it was. I thought the salad had gone bad. But no, it was the cilantro. If I taste it, I can't get the soapy, poisonous taste out of my mouth."-GoddessofWine Burbank, CAUnited States

From IHateCilantro.com

http://www.goddessofwine.com/

Why?

• Some people are genetically pre-disposed to hate cilantro.

• It appears as if they are hyper-sensitive to the aldehydes.

• They link the aldehyde to chemical cleaning agents and dirt, or crawly insects, then the brain highlights the mismatch and the potential threat to their safety.

• This can be re-trained.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html

The Perception of Flavor: Plant Odors

• Fruit.

Ethylene (ethene) (C2H4) is a volatile molecule that plays a central role in the ripening of fruit. When we smell C2H4, we know the peak of ripening is occurring.


• Terpene. These are five-carbon molecules that can take many forms. They are common constituents of plants as well as of fruits, herbs, and spices. The distinctive smell of pine trees in the forest is due to terpenes in the tree resins. They are highly volatile and therefore act quickly when raw vegetables are cut or chewed, and they are quickly lost in cooking. They are also highly reactive with each other and with other molecules.

Adapted from: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee


• Sulfur.

Sulfur-containing molecules often are produced by a plant for defensive purposes. They have an aroma with an “edge” that gives a “pungent” quality to the smell.



• Phenols.

These are six-member carbon-ring molecules with a variety of side groups hanging off them. Different phenolic compounds are responsible for the main “notes” of different herbs and spices

.



• Green.This aroma is faint until the plant tissue is torn apart, or cut, as by a knife, or chewed. These actions damage the cell membranes, causing an oxidizing enzyme called lipoxygenase (lipid = fat, oxygenase = to break down by combining with oxygen) to act on the fatty molecules that make up the cell membrane to break them down into small, volatile fatty acids, which are further dismantled by other enzymes in the cell contents.


ENZYMES

So, what is the role of enzymes in producing flavor?

ENZYMES

• Enzymes are super important for both flavor and digestion.

• In fact, the process of digestion begins in the mouth with an enzyme in the saliva called amylase.

• The enzyme amylase works to break down starch into simple sugars such as maltose and dextrin that can be further broken down in the small intestine.

• Did you know that about 30% of starch digestion takes place in the mouth cavity.

ENZYMES

So, what is the role of enzymes in producing flavor?

The role of enzymes in the perception of flavor is to break down large molecules in food into smaller molecules which alters their perception by the flavor system.

Meat

• According to Richard Wrangham in his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, the great leap forward in the development not only human cuisines, but also the associated emergence of human culture and language, was the discovery of the use of controlled fire to cook foods.

• The greatest effect was achieved by cooking meat. Our attraction to meat comes mostly from the smell, both orthonasal and retronasal, smell from ingested food in the mouth associated with flavor.

• The most attractive volatile molecules from cooked meat are produced by the “Maillard reaction.”

Meat

• The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring the addition of heat above 285°F (140°C).

• This is a form of non-enzymatic browning where the sugar interacts with the amino acids in the meat.

• This process accelerates in an alkaline environment.

• This reaction is the basis of the flavoring industry, since the type of amino acid determines the resulting flavor.

The Perception of Flavor: Sight

The sight of our food and drink before we consume it has a highly significant influence on how we judge its flavor.

The Perception of Flavor: Sound

The sound of our food as we eat it is an integral part of the flavor experience. Sizzle? Crunch?

The Perception of Flavor: Feel

Does food texture contribute to the flavor of food?

The different types of touch that food and liquid produce in the mouth go to the brain to the cortex.

The touch receptors in the mouth and tongue have an enormous representation in the cortex, which explains why the way our food feels in our mouth contributes so heavily to taste.

The Perception of Flavor: Pain

Pain commonly signals something to be avoided. Fish bones, for instance.

While you would think that most people reject food that causes pain in the mouth, many people learn to LOVE the pain wrought by the capsaicin (N-Vanillyl-8-methyl-6-(E)-noneamide ) molecules.

Where are they found? In chili peppers. This is an example of how the hardwired aversive behavioral responses at birth can be overcome by learning.

The Perception of Flavor: Temperature

The temperature of food has and effect on all the somato-sensory pathways for flavor.

What is the most important thing for you to know?

When it comes to flavor, EVERYTHING counts. If you want happy customers, maximize the flavor (and thus the emotion) of their experience.

Don’t cop out with French fries (High Fat, High Sugar, High Salt)

Be creative, be smart and be professional!

Dr. Russ L’HommeDieuDPTDr. Russ L’HommeDieu

DPT

The Neurophysiological Basis of Flavor - Suffolk Community College - Culinary Arts Program -

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