The brain trick to become a healthier eater
Our experience of being human starts with food. It's central to the journey that our species took to get here. As we evolved, we began to use tools that were associated with food; either the killing of it, or the cutting up of it in order to eat it.
Then we discovered fire, and started cooking on it, beginning a process that saw our brains treble in size. Eating like this also brought us together as a group around a fire, and our lower jaw shrank, as we no longer had to tear through raw cartilage.
To eat cooked food, then, is to be human – it determines who we are.
Altering our relationship with food requires us to re-engineer our most fundamental behavior patterns. It is characterised by what out mother ate while she was pregnant, what we ate whilst growing up, what country we live in, memory association and so much more.
So what can we do if our comfort food is burgers and fries?
For those already hard-wired to expect too much sugar or salt, a more intelligent approach is needed to change those habits.
We need to fool the brain into thinking it is getting more of a particular taste than it really is. Imagine making a cup of coffee with one coffee bean; it would taste pretty insipid. But consider drinking a cup of hot water and then eating a whole coffee bean; it would have far more impact. You can do the same with food, packaging the release of certain flavours to maximise impact.
There are, in fact, many sensory inputs that affect how we taste something. If you want to accentuate the sweetness of a food item, imagine that you pick up the packet and it's all soft and smooth, and then there's a satisfying squidgy noise when you open the lid. It will make a difference.
As strange as it might sound, the whetting of any of our senses can dramatically increase the impact of a small amount of flavour. The weight of the glass you drink something in can change how it tastes, the smell of what you're eating, the shape of the bowl and feel of the cutlery you use. All of these will have an impact.
So instead of regulating and taxing and dictating, the way to change our eating habits is to fool our brain into thinking it is getting more of what we want than is actually the case.
This isn't a rational approach, it's an emotional one, precisely because eating is an instinctive and not a rational activity. Setting aside the rational is a real challenge for policy makers, but if they want us to become less obese as a nation, they must realise that laws are often the worst way to change human behaviour.
Written by Heston Blumenthal. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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