from the british broadcasting authority news site
the spellings have been changed and elisions have been removed
cravings tied to fond memories
by thrasy petropoulos
there is a game that heston blumenthal plays with his guests at the fat duck
the owner of the renowned three michelin starred restaurant in bray berkshire moves among the tables and asks
diners to recall their favorite childhood food memories except to heston this is no game over time he has built
up a database of peoples fondest memories from childhood chief among them licorice and before long none other
than salmon poached with licorice appears on the menu there is more than meets the eye to this approach it has
its roots in food psychology and particularly the study of cravings
dr peter barham the molecular gastronomist and close friend of heston blumenthal says that if you crave food it
is yearning for a sensation not a taste that you remember from another time usually childhood
dr peter barham has experimented with isolating a flavor and then reintroducing it to another medium such as
bacon and egg ice cream or in experimenting with jellies within jellies
he too has played the childhood food memory trick with heston and encouraged him to use it as a culinary tool
it all started when heston chanced upon what he remembered as his favorite cereal and excitedly took it home
to his kids
he promptly built it up over the breakfast table and served it with aplomb only to find that neither he nor
his children could stand it
he checked with the manufacturers and found that the product had not changed in any way
it was therefore not the taste that he remembered with such fondness but the memories associated with that
taste
if you crave food it is yearning for a sensation not a taste that you remember from another time usually
childhood dr barham explained
sweets because they made you feel good when you were sad or maybe it was the hot chocolate you had after
a long winters walk with your mother and father
this goes to the heart of what craving a particular food is about
when you have a craving what you really want is that sensation in your mouth and the experience that goes
with it he said
there is no such thing as being born with a sweet tooth as a rule people who were given sweets regularly
as a child or in specific situations will want to recreate that as adults
dr barham said there are some indisputable physical cravings for instance penguins eating seashells before
laying eggs and i am told pregnant women having been known to eat chalk to boost their calcium levels
but almost all food cravings are emotional even when we need iron we think of spinach only because we have
been told most probably by our mother that spinach contains iron
and he said advertisers knew all the buttons to push to prompt memories that will make us go out and buy
their products
much of what we think we want is according to dr barham a trick of the senses
as he explained people say dogs have an amazing sense of smell but ours is better
we can discriminate between something like twenty thousand different molecules it is only that we do not go around
with our noses pressed up against trees
what happens is that our brain tells us to ignore most of those smells
it is why pregnant women get a heightened sense of smell all the hormones rushing around their bodies disrupt
the editing signals from the brain
he added that we all know that smells and flavors evoke memories but equally we have an amazing memory for
smells and flavors even sometimes when they are not there
chewing gum loses its taste after two minutes it does not stop us chewing for half an hour
it follows therefore that we can control our cravings for food if we want to
if you have a craving for chocolate at work you can learn to control that craving or better still change the
craving to something more healthy by rewarding yourself each time you eat a piece of fruit