WEBVTT 00:00:00.817 --> 00:00:04.087 So I had this very interesting experience 00:00:04.111 --> 00:00:05.261 five years ago. 00:00:06.278 --> 00:00:09.103 You know, me and my husband, we were out grocery shopping, 00:00:09.127 --> 00:00:10.720 as we do every other day, 00:00:10.744 --> 00:00:14.093 but this time, we found this fancy, 00:00:14.117 --> 00:00:17.839 you know, I'm talking fair-trade, I'm talking organic, 00:00:17.863 --> 00:00:20.395 I'm talking Kenyan, single-origin coffee 00:00:20.419 --> 00:00:22.152 that we splurged and got. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:23.252 --> 00:00:26.554 And that was when the problem started already. 00:00:26.578 --> 00:00:30.418 You know, my husband, he deemed this coffee blend superior 00:00:30.442 --> 00:00:32.831 to our regular and much cheaper coffee, 00:00:32.855 --> 00:00:37.204 which made me imagine a life based solely on fancy coffee 00:00:37.228 --> 00:00:39.656 and I saw our household budged explode. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.680 --> 00:00:40.681 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:40.705 --> 00:00:41.855 And worse ... 00:00:43.038 --> 00:00:46.140 I also feared that this investment would be in vain. 00:00:46.164 --> 00:00:49.680 That we wouldn't be able to notice this difference after all. 00:00:51.355 --> 00:00:55.188 Unfortunately, especially for my husband, 00:00:55.212 --> 00:00:58.332 he had momentarily forgotten that he's married to a neuroscientist 00:00:58.356 --> 00:01:00.141 with a specialty in food science. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:00.165 --> 00:01:01.339 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:01.363 --> 00:01:02.536 Alright? 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:04.187 So without further ado, 00:01:04.211 --> 00:01:06.428 I mean, I just put him to the test. 00:01:07.126 --> 00:01:09.087 I set up an experiment 00:01:09.111 --> 00:01:11.996 where I first blindfolded my husband. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:12.475 --> 00:01:13.626 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:13.650 --> 00:01:17.101 Then I brewed the two types of coffee 00:01:17.125 --> 00:01:19.705 and I told him that I would serve them to him 00:01:19.729 --> 00:01:21.069 one at a time. 00:01:22.387 --> 00:01:24.236 Now, with clear certainty, 00:01:24.260 --> 00:01:26.678 my husband, he described the first cup of coffee 00:01:26.702 --> 00:01:27.998 as more raw and bitter. 00:01:28.022 --> 00:01:30.752 You know, a coffee that would be ideal for the mornings 00:01:30.776 --> 00:01:34.747 with the sole purpose of terrorizing the body awake by its alarming taste. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:34.771 --> 00:01:36.874 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:36.898 --> 00:01:39.762 The second cup of coffee, on the other hand, 00:01:39.786 --> 00:01:43.577 was both fruity and delightful. 00:01:43.601 --> 00:01:47.668 You know, coffee that one can enjoy in the evening and relax. 00:01:49.466 --> 00:01:52.299 Little did my husband know, however, 00:01:52.323 --> 00:01:55.648 that I hadn't actually given him the two types of coffee. 00:01:55.672 --> 00:01:58.810 I had given him the exact same cup of coffee twice. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:58.834 --> 00:02:01.001 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:01.358 --> 00:02:03.992 And obviously, it wasn't this one cup of coffee 00:02:04.016 --> 00:02:06.960 that had suddenly gone from horrible to fantastic. 00:02:07.270 --> 00:02:11.137 No, this taste difference was a product of my husband's own mind. 00:02:11.521 --> 00:02:14.528 Of his bias in favor of the fancy coffee 00:02:14.552 --> 00:02:17.941 that made him experience taste differences that just weren't there. 00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:24.341 Alright, so, having saved our household budget, 00:02:24.365 --> 00:02:26.048 and finishing on a very good laugh, 00:02:26.072 --> 00:02:27.247 me especially -- NOTE Paragraph 00:02:27.271 --> 00:02:28.278 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:28.302 --> 00:02:31.268 I then started wondering just how we could have received 00:02:31.292 --> 00:02:34.894 two such different responses from a single cup of coffee. 00:02:35.331 --> 00:02:39.022 Why would my husband make such a bold statement 00:02:39.046 --> 00:02:43.493 at the risk of being publicly mocked for the rest of his life? NOTE Paragraph 00:02:43.517 --> 00:02:45.350 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:46.831 --> 00:02:49.022 The striking answer is 00:02:49.046 --> 00:02:51.172 that I think you would have done the same. 00:02:51.196 --> 00:02:54.442 And that's the biggest challenge in my field of science, 00:02:54.466 --> 00:02:57.776 assessing what's reality behind these answers 00:02:57.800 --> 00:02:58.966 that we receive. 00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:01.801 Because how are we going to make food tastier 00:03:01.825 --> 00:03:05.419 if we cannot rely on what people actually say they like? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:06.728 --> 00:03:10.258 To understand, let's first have a look at how we actually sense food. 00:03:10.923 --> 00:03:13.241 When I drink a cup of coffee, 00:03:13.265 --> 00:03:17.407 I detect this cup of coffee by receptors on my body, 00:03:17.431 --> 00:03:21.878 information which is then turned into activated neurons in my brain. 00:03:22.570 --> 00:03:25.300 Wavelengths of light are converted to colors. 00:03:25.324 --> 00:03:29.459 Molecules in the liquid are detected by receptors in my mouth, 00:03:29.483 --> 00:03:32.804 and categorized as one of five basic tastes. 00:03:33.266 --> 00:03:37.496 That's salty, sour, bitter, sweet and umami. 00:03:38.433 --> 00:03:41.734 Molecules in the air are detected by receptors in my nose 00:03:41.758 --> 00:03:43.292 and converted to odors. 00:03:43.704 --> 00:03:46.442 And ditto for touch, for temperature, 00:03:46.466 --> 00:03:48.077 for sound and more. 00:03:48.394 --> 00:03:52.252 All this information is detected by my receptors 00:03:52.276 --> 00:03:55.545 and converted into signals between neurons in my brain. 00:03:55.569 --> 00:04:00.456 Information which is then woven together and integrated, 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:03.331 so that my brain recognizes 00:04:03.355 --> 00:04:09.112 that yes, I just had a cup of coffee, and yes, I liked it. 00:04:09.763 --> 00:04:11.739 And only then, 00:04:11.763 --> 00:04:14.747 after all this neuron heavy-lifting, 00:04:14.771 --> 00:04:18.036 do we consciously experience this cup of coffee. 00:04:18.988 --> 00:04:22.922 And this is now where we have a very common misconception. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:23.473 --> 00:04:27.004 People tend to think that what we experience consciously 00:04:27.028 --> 00:04:30.218 must then be an absolute true reflection of reality. 00:04:30.588 --> 00:04:32.302 But as you just heard, 00:04:32.326 --> 00:04:35.842 there are many stages of neural interpretation 00:04:35.866 --> 00:04:37.889 in between the physical item 00:04:37.913 --> 00:04:40.371 and the conscious experience of it. 00:04:40.395 --> 00:04:42.514 Which means that sometimes, 00:04:42.538 --> 00:04:46.341 this conscious experience is not really reflecting that reality at all. 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:48.920 Like what happened to my husband. 00:04:49.808 --> 00:04:53.950 That's because some physical stimuli may just be so weak 00:04:53.974 --> 00:04:58.347 that they just can't break that barrier to enter our conscious mind, 00:04:58.371 --> 00:05:00.253 while the information that does 00:05:00.277 --> 00:05:04.363 may get twisted on its way there by our hidden biases. 00:05:04.824 --> 00:05:08.995 And people, they have a lot of biases. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:11.649 --> 00:05:14.181 Yes, if you're sitting there right now, thinking ... 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:18.776 you could probably have done better than my husband, 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:22.347 you could probably have assessed those coffees correctly, 00:05:22.371 --> 00:05:25.180 then you're actually suffering from a bias. 00:05:26.116 --> 00:05:28.585 A bias called the bias blind spot. 00:05:28.609 --> 00:05:33.415 Our tendency to see ourselves as less biased than other people. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:33.717 --> 00:05:34.907 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:34.931 --> 00:05:36.424 And yeah, we can even be biased 00:05:36.448 --> 00:05:38.415 about the biases that we're biased about. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:38.439 --> 00:05:39.440 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:39.464 --> 00:05:41.588 Not trying to make this any easier. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:42.270 --> 00:05:44.738 A bias that we know in the food industry 00:05:44.762 --> 00:05:46.896 is the courtesy bias. 00:05:47.619 --> 00:05:50.032 This is a bias where we give an opinion 00:05:50.056 --> 00:05:53.711 which is considered socially acceptable, 00:05:53.735 --> 00:05:56.400 but it's certainly not our own opinion, right? 00:05:57.575 --> 00:06:00.130 And I'm challenged by this as a food researcher, 00:06:00.154 --> 00:06:05.252 because when people say they like my new sugar-reduced milkshake, 00:06:05.276 --> 00:06:06.458 do they now? NOTE Paragraph 00:06:06.482 --> 00:06:07.537 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:07.561 --> 00:06:09.910 Or are they saying they like it 00:06:09.934 --> 00:06:12.915 because they know I'm listening and they want to please me? 00:06:13.544 --> 00:06:16.768 Or maybe they just to seem fit and healthy in my ears. 00:06:18.115 --> 00:06:19.718 I wouldn't know. 00:06:19.742 --> 00:06:24.355 But worse, they wouldn't even know themselves. 00:06:25.348 --> 00:06:26.705 Even trained food assessors, 00:06:26.729 --> 00:06:29.300 and that's people who have been explicitly taught 00:06:29.324 --> 00:06:33.451 to disentangle the sense of smell and the sense of taste, 00:06:33.475 --> 00:06:36.582 may still be biased to evaluate products sweeter 00:06:36.606 --> 00:06:38.139 if they contain vanilla. 00:06:38.455 --> 00:06:39.605 Why? 00:06:39.978 --> 00:06:43.128 Well, it's certainly not because vanilla actually tastes sweet. 00:06:44.510 --> 00:06:48.466 It's because even these professionals are human, 00:06:48.490 --> 00:06:51.720 and have eaten lot of desserts, like us, 00:06:51.744 --> 00:06:55.239 and have therefore learned to associate sweetness and vanilla. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:56.056 --> 00:06:59.373 So taste and smell and other sensory information 00:06:59.397 --> 00:07:02.484 is inextricably entangled in our conscious mind. 00:07:02.508 --> 00:07:05.434 So on one hand, we can actually use this. 00:07:05.458 --> 00:07:07.927 We can use these conscious experiences, 00:07:07.951 --> 00:07:12.220 use this data, exploit it by adding vanilla instead of sugar 00:07:12.244 --> 00:07:13.844 to sweeten our products. 00:07:14.823 --> 00:07:17.149 But on the other hand, 00:07:17.173 --> 00:07:18.760 with these conscious evaluations, 00:07:18.784 --> 00:07:19.982 I still wouldn't know 00:07:20.006 --> 00:07:22.871 whether people actually liked that sugar-reduced milkshake. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:24.006 --> 00:07:25.791 So how do we get around this problem? 00:07:25.815 --> 00:07:28.077 How do we actually assess what's reality 00:07:28.101 --> 00:07:30.736 behind these conscious food evaluations? 00:07:30.760 --> 00:07:34.935 The key is to remove the barrier of the conscious mind 00:07:34.959 --> 00:07:38.231 and instead target the information in the brain directly. 00:07:39.015 --> 00:07:40.316 And it turns out 00:07:40.340 --> 00:07:43.407 our brain holds a lot of fascinating secrets. 00:07:43.872 --> 00:07:48.940 Our brain constantly receives sensory information from our entire body, 00:07:48.964 --> 00:07:51.321 most of which we don't even become aware of, 00:07:51.345 --> 00:07:54.265 like the taste information that I constantly receive 00:07:54.289 --> 00:07:56.158 from my gastrointestinal tract. 00:07:56.647 --> 00:08:00.718 And my brain will also act on all this sensory information. 00:08:01.274 --> 00:08:04.710 It will alter my behavior without my knowledge, 00:08:04.734 --> 00:08:07.990 and it can increase the diameter of my pupils 00:08:08.014 --> 00:08:09.974 if I experience something I really like. 00:08:10.355 --> 00:08:13.410 And increase my sweat production ever so slightly 00:08:13.434 --> 00:08:15.301 if that emotion was intense. 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:17.990 And with brain scans, 00:08:18.014 --> 00:08:21.280 we can now assess this information in the brain. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:22.021 --> 00:08:24.469 Specifically, I have used a brain-scanning technique 00:08:24.493 --> 00:08:26.846 called electroencephalography, 00:08:26.870 --> 00:08:28.703 or "EEG" in short, 00:08:28.727 --> 00:08:32.672 which involves wearing a cap studded with electrodes, 00:08:32.696 --> 00:08:35.164 128 in my case. 00:08:35.957 --> 00:08:39.568 Each electrode then measures the electrical activity of the brain 00:08:39.592 --> 00:08:42.193 with precision down to the millisecond. 00:08:43.640 --> 00:08:45.680 The problem is, however, 00:08:45.704 --> 00:08:48.133 it's not just the brain that's electrically active, 00:08:48.157 --> 00:08:50.895 it's also the rest of the body as well as the environment 00:08:50.919 --> 00:08:53.633 that contains a lot of electrical activity all the time. 00:08:53.657 --> 00:08:55.045 To do my research, 00:08:55.069 --> 00:08:58.069 I therefore need to minimize all this noise. 00:08:58.411 --> 00:09:01.894 So I ask my participants to do a number of things here. 00:09:02.427 --> 00:09:03.586 First off, 00:09:03.610 --> 00:09:06.915 I ask them to rest their head in a chin rest, 00:09:06.939 --> 00:09:09.360 to avoid too much muscle movement. 00:09:09.384 --> 00:09:11.209 I also ask them to, meanwhile, 00:09:11.233 --> 00:09:13.379 stare at the center of a computer monitor 00:09:13.403 --> 00:09:16.172 to avoid too much eye movements and eye blinks. 00:09:16.196 --> 00:09:18.704 And I can't even have swallowing, 00:09:18.728 --> 00:09:23.320 so I ask my participants to stick the tongue out of their mouth 00:09:23.344 --> 00:09:25.352 over a glass bowl, 00:09:25.376 --> 00:09:29.576 and then I constantly let taste stimuli onto the tongue, 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:31.704 which then drip off into this bowl, NOTE Paragraph 00:09:31.728 --> 00:09:33.212 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:33.236 --> 00:09:37.379 and then, just to complete this wonderful picture, 00:09:37.403 --> 00:09:39.990 I also provide my participants with a bib, 00:09:40.014 --> 00:09:43.117 available in either pink or blue, as they please. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:43.141 --> 00:09:47.228 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:47.252 --> 00:09:49.366 Looks like a normal eating experience, right? NOTE Paragraph 00:09:49.390 --> 00:09:50.540 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:51.585 --> 00:09:53.005 No, obviously not. 00:09:54.546 --> 00:09:55.895 And worse, 00:09:55.919 --> 00:09:59.260 I can't even control what my participants are thinking about, 00:09:59.284 --> 00:10:01.395 so I need to repeat this taste procedure 00:10:01.419 --> 00:10:02.569 multiple times. 00:10:02.958 --> 00:10:05.789 Maybe the first time, they're thinking about the free lunch 00:10:05.813 --> 00:10:07.974 that I provide for participating, 00:10:07.998 --> 00:10:09.272 or maybe the second time, 00:10:09.296 --> 00:10:11.296 they're thinking about Christmas coming up 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:14.220 and what to get for mom this year, you know. 00:10:15.109 --> 00:10:19.236 But common for each response is the response to the taste. 00:10:19.260 --> 00:10:22.527 So I repeat this taste procedure multiple times. 00:10:22.871 --> 00:10:24.720 Sixty, in fact. 00:10:25.291 --> 00:10:26.911 And then I average the responses, 00:10:26.935 --> 00:10:29.839 because responses unrelated to taste will average out. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:30.307 --> 00:10:31.958 And using this method, 00:10:31.982 --> 00:10:34.506 we and other labs, 00:10:34.530 --> 00:10:38.033 have investigated how long a time it takes from "food lands on our tongue" 00:10:38.057 --> 00:10:41.036 until our brain has figured out which taste it's experiencing. 00:10:41.639 --> 00:10:44.853 Turns out this occurs within the first already 100 milliseconds, 00:10:44.877 --> 00:10:47.853 that's about half a second before we even become aware of it. 00:10:48.268 --> 00:10:50.080 And next up, we also investigated 00:10:50.104 --> 00:10:53.903 the taste difference between sugar and artificial sweeteners 00:10:53.927 --> 00:10:56.203 that in our setup taste extremely similar. 00:10:56.563 --> 00:10:58.594 In fact, they tasted so similar 00:10:58.618 --> 00:11:02.197 that half my participants could only barely tell the taste apart, 00:11:02.221 --> 00:11:04.546 while the other half simply couldn't. 00:11:05.015 --> 00:11:06.776 But amazingly, 00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:09.926 if we looked across the entire group of participants, 00:11:09.950 --> 00:11:13.751 we saw that their brains definitely could tell the taste apart. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:14.895 --> 00:11:17.754 So with EEG and other brain-scanning devices 00:11:17.778 --> 00:11:19.938 and other physiological measures -- 00:11:19.962 --> 00:11:21.133 sweat and pupil size -- 00:11:21.157 --> 00:11:23.172 we have new gateways to our brain. 00:11:23.625 --> 00:11:27.316 Gateways that will help us remove the barrier of the conscious mind 00:11:27.340 --> 00:11:29.523 to see through the biases of people 00:11:29.547 --> 00:11:32.327 and possibly even capture subconscious taste differences. 00:11:32.689 --> 00:11:37.000 And that's because we can now measure people's very first response to food 00:11:37.024 --> 00:11:38.841 before they've become conscious of it, 00:11:38.865 --> 00:11:42.031 and before they've started rationalizing why they like it or not. 00:11:42.476 --> 00:11:44.651 We can measure people's facial expressions, 00:11:44.675 --> 00:11:47.172 we can measure where they're looking, 00:11:47.196 --> 00:11:49.196 we can measure their sweat response, 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:51.620 we can measure their brain response. 00:11:52.030 --> 00:11:54.093 And with all these measures, 00:11:54.117 --> 00:11:56.455 we are going to be able to create tastier foods, 00:11:56.479 --> 00:11:58.876 because we can measure whether people actually like 00:11:58.900 --> 00:12:00.637 that sugar-reduced milkshake. 00:12:00.661 --> 00:12:04.764 And we can create healthier foods without compromising taste, 00:12:04.788 --> 00:12:07.561 because we can measure the response to different sweeteners 00:12:07.585 --> 00:12:10.688 and find the sweetener that gives the response that's more similar 00:12:10.712 --> 00:12:12.005 to the response from sugar. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:12.029 --> 00:12:14.704 And furthermore, we can just help create healthier foods, 00:12:14.728 --> 00:12:17.695 because we can help understand how we actually sense food 00:12:17.719 --> 00:12:18.986 in the first place. 00:12:19.533 --> 00:12:22.200 Which we know surprisingly little about. 00:12:22.589 --> 00:12:25.920 For example, we know that there are those five basic tastes, 00:12:25.944 --> 00:12:28.187 but we strongly suspect that there are more, 00:12:28.211 --> 00:12:30.910 and in fact, using our EEG setup, 00:12:30.934 --> 00:12:33.188 we found evidence that fat, 00:12:33.212 --> 00:12:35.799 besides being sensed by its texture and smell, 00:12:35.823 --> 00:12:37.092 is also tasted. 00:12:37.553 --> 00:12:40.934 Meaning that fat could be this new sixth basic taste. 00:12:41.522 --> 00:12:45.879 And if we figure out how our brain recognizes fat and sugar, 00:12:45.903 --> 00:12:47.220 and I'm just dreaming here, 00:12:47.244 --> 00:12:48.736 but could we then one day 00:12:48.760 --> 00:12:52.798 create a milkshake with zero calories that tastes just like the real deal? 00:12:54.894 --> 00:12:57.172 Or maybe we figure out that we can't, 00:12:57.196 --> 00:12:59.766 because we subconsciously detect calories 00:12:59.790 --> 00:13:02.574 via our receptors in our gastrointestinal tract. 00:13:03.137 --> 00:13:04.537 The future will show. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:05.978 --> 00:13:08.803 Our conscious experience of food 00:13:08.827 --> 00:13:13.791 is just the tip of the iceberg of our total sensation of food. 00:13:13.815 --> 00:13:16.122 And by studying this total sensation, 00:13:16.146 --> 00:13:19.022 conscious and subconscious alike, 00:13:19.046 --> 00:13:23.555 I truly believe that we can make tastier and healthier foods for all. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:23.579 --> 00:13:24.730 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:24.754 --> 00:13:29.920 (Applause)