The Chemistry of Food & Taste | Dr. Harold McGee

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Harold McGee. Dr.

Harold McGee is a professor at Stanford University and world-renowned author on the topic of science and the chemistry of food and cooking. He has spent more than four decades researching and writing about this topic. His work is unique because it at once teaches us about why foods taste the way they do, as well as how to make essentially any food or drink taste better. I, like presumably most of you, absolutely love to eat. And for me that's an understatement.

I love food and eating. Today Harold teaches us about everything from how certain types of cookware the bowls, the pans you use, even the utensils you use, can change the taste of those foods, as well as simple things like adding a pinch of salt to anything bitter tasting, including coffee, yes, coffee, changes its chemistry and flavor for the better, and he explains why. We discussed the preparation of meat and this thing that we call savoriness or the umami taste, and how it's brought about by heating proteins in very specific ways and how you can bring out more of those flavors. and how to get more of the healthy compounds such as polyphenols found in chocolate and cacao, and we cover the much-debated issue of whether more expensive wines are truly better than less expensive ones in terms of their taste, or whether it's all a function of marketing.

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