A matter of taste:
A new documentary series, The Secrets Of Your Food, on TVNZ 1 this week celebrates the biology, chemistry, and physics of our food and examines the sweet tricks that nature plays on us. James Rampton reports.
Why we love the foods we do.
Every bite we take conceals a surprising amount of science. That’s according to Michael Mosley and James Wong in their appetising new series The Secrets Of Your Food on TVNZ 1.
The presenters circle the globe, putting the microscope on the physics, chemistry and biology that goes into everything we eat.
Taking over the UK’s leading food lab, they break down people’s favourite meals, right down to the molecular level.
In the first episode, Mosley and Wong investigate how the chemicals in our food help nourish and build up our bodies.
The second episode probes how the combination of chemistry and biology is the source of all the tastes, sensations, and flavours in our food.
In this programme, Mosley takes apart a Thai meal, showing how its effect on the tongue can be boiled down to just five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and the less well-known umami (a Japanese word meaning “pleasant savoury taste”).
In the final episode, Mosley and Wong demonstrate the impact of food on the brain.
The series opens by exploring the importance of the first food most of us ever taste: breast milk.
“Human breast milk contains all but one of the essential nutrients that our bodies need – it’s just potassium that’s missing,” Mosley explains. “For most of us,
it’s the perfect start to our lifelong relationship with food.”
He says that, “One of the things I find really interesting about breast milk is that it contains a secret that food manufacturers have exploited to get us ‘hooked’ on their products.
“It’s the magic ratio of 2:1, carbs to fat. You will find the same ratio of carbs to fat in many of the foods that we find so hard to resist, ranging from chocolate and biscuits to ice cream and crisps.
“Unlike these highly processed foods, breast milk is, of course, the ultimate home-made food. It is tailor-made for babies, who need lots of energy to grow.
“So one of the reasons why we find processed food so irresistible may be because we’re reminded of the first food we ever had.”
The Secrets Of Your Food also underlines the way in which strawberries are able to cannily “delude” us.
Mosley reveals that, “We discovered that strawberries have only half the sugar of blueberries and yet they taste sweeter. Why? Well, strawberries are surprisingly devious. They give off aroma molecules that trick our brains into thinking they contain more sugar than they really do. On the one hand, they need to be sweet enough to be eaten so that in the wild, their seed is spread through animal droppings. “But they also want to conserve some of the energy that would go into developing a sweeter flavour to reproduce and grow.” Mosley adds that this sneaky ruse may have benefits for us all. “Long ago, the strawberry plant discovered that a good way to make its fruit more attractive, without having to give away too much precious sugar, is to pretend to be sweeter than it is. “It’s a neat trick that a handful of other fruits have pulled off. If we can learn exactly how they do it, then this could help food scientists find ways of reducing the sugar content of our foods.” Mosley admits that presenting The Secrets Of Your Food has taught him many new things, even though he is an expert in this field. “Making this series has been a real education,” he says. He gives an example. “Interestingly, we have around 20 more types of bitter receptors on our tongues than sweet receptors, which suggests that way in the past, humans’ overwhelming need was to be aware of poisonous foods, which often taste bitter. “Put simply, our sense of taste has evolved to be our mouth’s gatekeeper.”
“One of the reasons why we find processed food so irresistible may be because we’re reminded of the first food we ever had.”
– Michael Mosley