How learning to savour flavour can transform your health | Spencer Hyman

Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health. Have you ever wondered why foods that are high in salt, fat, and sugar are so tempting? Today, we worry that these things damage our health. So why would evolution shape our brains to find them so delicious? The truth is, fat, sugar, and salt are rare in nature. And when we lived in the wild, they provided much needed nutrition. So finding them irresistible motivated us to track them down, which helped keep us alive. Today, big food companies exploit this feature of our evolution, employing highly paid incredibly smart food scientists to fine tune their recipes. Slowly tweaking them, they hijack our ancient brains and make their products irresistible. But there is something you can do to break free from their spell. Today, Spencer Hyman, a world renowned chocolate expert and flavor evangelist, is helping us to fight back. Alongside Zoe's scientific cofounder, professor Tim Spector, we learn about the hazards of wolfing down your food, and why learning to savour it could protect our health, protect the planet, and help us break free from big food's stranglehold. By the end of today's episode, you will have a new appreciation for flavor. You'll also learn how we've lost the art of savoring and how you can rediscover it. Today's episode is gonna be like herding cats because I have two of my friends, both Tim Spector and Spencer Hyman, and they're friends with each other, and they've already been talking about this subject for two hours before we start the podcast. So, Spencer, thank you for joining me today. Thank you very much. Very excited. Tim, thanks for being here. Pleasure. So I'm gonna try and keep you on the straight and narrow. And at least we have this tradition at the beginning where we start with these quick fire rounder questions from our listeners. So I believe here at least I can keep you to a yes or a no. Tim, have our brains evolved to seek out high fat, high sugar foods? Yes. Spencer, do big food companies design their products to encourage us to eat mindlessly? Definitely. Yes. Tim, can bolting your food down have long term negative health effects? Yes. Spencer, do highly processed foods reduce your ability to appreciate the flavors in natural food? Yes. Tim, should you chew each mouthful of food 32 times? Probably not. And finally, Spencer, what do you think is the most significant benefit of savoring your food rather than wolfing it down? Overall savoring as opposed to wolfing it down or bolting it down fast is the key to identifying and getting on the path to eating a healthy diet. Well, I look forward to unpacking all of that, and I think it's pretty obvious that people are attracted to foods that are sweet and salty and high fat. It seems like it's sort of baked into us as …