Have you ever wondered why certain combinations of flavours work so well together whilst others will leave you unsatisfied? Why do we love to eat the foods that other people hate and hate to eat the foods they love? According to new research, it’s all down a subtle combination of taste, smell and, most importantly, our individual memories and emotions. In this live webTV show, taste expert Tim Jacob explains why we respond to flavours the way we do and how we can open the door to a whole new world of adventurous eating.

Tim will also explain which flavours go well together, how to embrace new flavours and how ‘taste’ and flavour’ are two separate things. Our taste buds change every 7 years and new research by Walker’s Sensations shows that memory and emotion are closely linked to our flavour preferences. For example, our palettes are more sensitive in childhood, when our preferences are towards light, sweet flavours. Happy memories of these flavours explain our grown-up longing for comfort foods like chocolate and ice cream.

So log on as Tim Jacob explores the science of flavour and discover how easy it is to embrace new tastes. You will also have the chance to gain some practical advice on how you can impress your friends and family with the most tantalising flavour combinations. Tim will be answering your taste-related questions live online, so prepare to have your tastebuds comprehensively tickled.

H: Victoria Letch, host
T: Tim Jacob, Professor at the school of Biosciences at Cardiff University

H: Hello and welcome to the Food and Drink Show, I'm Victoria Letch. Now, have you ever wondered why certain combinations of flavours work so well together whilst others will leave you unsatisfied? Why do we love to eat foods that other people hate and hate to eat the foods they love? Well I'm delighted to be joined today by professor Tim Jacob from the Biosciences at Cardiff University, welcome to the show

T: Hello Vicky

H: Thanks very much for joining us. Ok I just want to start off with some research that was undertaken by Walkers Sensations. Now they say it's all down to a subtle combination of taste, of smell, memory and individual emotions. How do you think these factors affect our taste preferences?

T: Well the first thing to say is that when we talk about taste we use the word incorrectly. We mean flavour

H: Ok

T: Taste is very restricted – taste is only sweet, sour, salt, bitter and the savoury taste which is calledumani.

H: Ok

T: So we're talking about flavour, which is the combination of a number of different senses, but predominantly smell and taste, and of those two it's mostly smell, so what is going to determine our preferences in flavour is really smell

H: That's so interesting. So when someone says to you I have a good palette, do they mean "I've got a really good nasal passage?"

T: It means just – it does mean that and it's possible for people to have increased density of taste buds on their tongue, and such people – about 25% of the population – are called super tasters, and they tend to sense bitter substances more strongly than the rest of us, but apart from that then it's really – your nose, yes. What happens is as you chew food

H: Yes

T: The aroma rises and comes – sort of goes backwards through the nasal passages and activates the smell receptors

H: So that's all – goes down to – back to when we have a cold, because I don't know about you, when I have a cold I don't enjoy my food

T: Exactly

H: Which is hard for someone like me Tim, because I live for eating!

T: Well I mean it really does take the enjoyment out of drinking and eating, and imagine if you lost your sense of smell permanently

H: Yes

T: Which does happen

H: Yes people do suffer from

T: To some people – yes, and they really lose that pleasure of – that we get from eating and drinking, and since we do it quite a number of times a day

H: Yes

T: I mean that's quite a loss

H: Ok. And what about the whole idea of memories and how that affects your enjoyment of food? Because actually going – I don't want to talk about being poorly all the time, but going back to having a cold, I know the only thing I ever want is clear chicken noodle soup, a certain brand which I won't mention, that my mum used to always give me as a child because it used to just comfort me and make me feel better

T: Yes exactly

H: Instantly

T: So you want comfort foods. Basically our food preferences are determined really early in our lives. We're fed things when we're children that meet our sort of nutritional needs, and we have a basic requirement for carbohydrates, for energy, for proteins, for repair and growth, and then after about the age of 3, 4 or 5 we need it, we have a requirement for salt, and so those things have to be in our diet, and we – we learn the foods that supply those needs for us at that age, and those become, for us, you know our core, key foods, and will always of course take us back to our childhood because we have all these associated memories, happy memories hopefully for most people of being looked after as a child and fed, and even the treats of course, I mean a lot of comfort foods contain carbohydrates,

H: Yes

T: Lots of carbohydrates like ice cream for example

H: Yes chips, we could talk about this for hours

T: Fish fingers, jelly

H: Yes

T: And so on. These are you know perennial favourites, comfort foods, take us right back to childhood

H: If we go back to childhood, all those many moons ago, what if my parents which, for example weren't and I love and enjoy a broad range of foods, but if they just gave me my stock three meals and it was a combination of those for my primary years, can we sort of re-learn then to be more adventurous? Would you say if someone's a fussy eater now, does it go back to their childhood and what they would have eaten -

T: Well it does. I think this – the Walkers survey showed 64% of people in the UK were afraid to try new foods – 64%, that's a very large proportion

H: It's huge

T: It is isn't it? Well we are very, very conservative. We have to in a way force ourselves to be a bit more adventurous. What happens with bitter taste for example – there are two things that we don't like as children are bitter and sour tastes, these are – we have an aversive reaction to those

H: I know but it is quite funny to put a baby's tongue on a little bit of lemon! Have you ever done it?

T: That's a bit mean – I've seen these gorgeous pictures of babies, they're being subjected to -

H: It's a little bit cruel – actually can I just say, don't do that at home, it is cruel, and if you do please make sure you have some sort of relationship with that child. Don't do it to a stranger's baby, they won't like it

T: So they have a natural aversion to sour and bitter. Well later on, we can overcome that, I mean it's a protective mechanism when you're young, clearly but later on we know that for example a bitter food would be olives, that doesn't poison us, we know that,

H: Yes, yes

T: But it tastes – it is bitter and it is an acquired taste, but we can, we can actually – I wouldn't say force ourselves to like it but by trial and error we can actually grow -

H: Yes

T: To like it, and – I mean I hated olives when I was a teenager, I could not understand the adult fascination with olives

H: Yes

T: Now I love them and I know the difference between black and white olives

H: Yes

T: So you know, you can learn

H: It is amazing isn't it how that happens?

T: And our aversion to bitter declines really quite sharply after teenage, so young adults and beyond, you know, have much more tolerance of bitter

H: Yes. I remember when ma and pa would have their little dinner parties and the cheese board would come out, and I would look at it and think why would you want to eat so something that just stinks of feet? And I couldn't understand, and now, I mean blue cheese is absolutely one of my most favourite things to sit and munch on

T: Yes exactly, I mean the thing about stinky cheese is that it's the result of bacterial action on the sort of dairy product, and we have a natural aversion to the smell of – produced by bacteria, because usually it's associated with decay and decomposition. Well in fact that is what's going on in a cheese, let's face it, but we know – it's worth -

H: The result is stunning

T: It's worth overcoming the smell, yes

H: Now I just want to go back very briefly so we get Kelly's question answered, thank you very much Kelly. She says "hi Tim. I seem to always reach for the ice cream when I feel down and upset. Is there any reason for this?" Is it all to do with childhood or -

T: Well it's primarily it is, it's a comfort food, it will take you back to those treat times when you were a child and you had, you know that wonderful feeling of being rewarded, but of course it's a high carbohydrate food, and as such there is a reward system, the brain gives you rewards for finding carbohydrates.

H: Yes

T: Of course it's very difficult now isn't it, I mean go back to when we were in the jungle or sort of Neolithic times when food was harder to come by and carbohydrates were particularly hard to come by, you had to work quite hard to find them and so that's why you know, the brain gives you a reward – well done, you've found that fruit or something, your carbohydrate. Now we're surrounded by them so that reward sy6stem actually works against us and we tend to take on too much

H: Ok and what about the seven stages, now you're going to have to tell me all about this, the seven stages of tasting – taste buds? So your seven year stages. Am I making any sense here?

T: Yes I know what you're referring to. There is this sort of common thought that we renew ourselves, our body renews itself every seven years and it probably originates from work done on radio isotope decay and you can work out the renewal time of different tissues in the body, this is work that was carried out on animals and it's been extrapolated to humans. And the atoms – you can show that the atoms in our body completely turn over in a seven year period

H: Right

T: So the idea is, I think, the idea has grown up that we replace our tissues every seven years. Well when it comes to taste we replace the taste cells much more rapidly than that. They're on the surface of the tongue, and of course they're very exposed there and they turn over, a taste cell has a life span of about 10-14 years

H: Oh wow

T: But the taste bud has lots – has many taste cells in it

H: Right

T: So it's a cluster of cells, and in that cluster you'll have cells that have been born, cells that are middle aged and cells that are dying, so that a taste bud is always there with a sort of population of different age cells in it

H: Right

T: And we would, we always have taste buds in our tongue. There isn't a period when they suddenly take a holiday as we replace them

H: Yes

T: They're always – continually replaced

H: Ok. This is probably a good time to take Cathy's question. Cathy, thank you very much. She says "my husband won't try anything new. I would like him to try but he says there is no point since he tried years ago and therefore won't like it now suddenly. What is the best way I can get him to try new things?"

T: Yes – bribery?

H: Yes

T: Well there are – I mean combinations – when you mix different tastes, initially it can be a bit discordant and alarming

H: yes

T: And sometimes clearly our sensory system is designed to stop us eating things that are bad for us. But in moderation these things, like bitter tastes and sour tastes can be added to some of our favourite foods to add that little bit of excitement

H: Yes

T: That little bit of – so it's like a discord in music, you know, it actually adds a little bit of something

H: Yes

T: To the music

H: Yes

T: And you know composers use it to develop some completely new styles and new sounds. So I mean you can apply the same logic to food.

H: Absolutely. It goes back to the fact the before we were with you guys, Tim and I were discussing mozzarella and we were saying actually it's quite a bland tasting cheese on its own but suddenly you add basil, sundried tomatoes perhaps and you've got a beautiful taste explosion for the mouth, haven't you? So it is all just about being inventive. I also quite like the idea of almost going back to how when you were a child and maybe putting in hubby's dinner, a little bit of garlic and hide it within flavours that he already recognises

T: Yes

H: And introducing new -

T: Absolutely, and garlic and – enhances the flavour so you might not even notice it's there to start with

H: Yes

T: It's of low levels. Another possibility is chilli because you can put it in very, very low levels and it does add a completely different sensation to taste because what the active ingredient in chilli peppers, which is capsaicin, is doing is actually a neurotoxin

H: Yes

T: It's poisoning the nerves, but of course in the concentrations that we would eat it in food it's just activating the nerve endings and giving you that sort of tingly hot sensation. But you can do it at very, very low levels, and that adds, so take a favourite food and then add a little bit of spice or chilli just to kind of enhance and broaden the taste and flavour experience

H: Well if you would like a taste and flavour experience I can tell you now that we've got some crisps there that will relate to the conversation we were just having about the basil and mozzarella, if you want to have a nibble you can! Ok fine well I will. You can, I will. Now my producer wants me to talk about bacon and maple syrup, because she loves – as do I – one of my favourite breakfasts, I have to say is pancakes, bacon, maple syrup -that's really quite odd though isn't it? All the savoury and the sweet together?

T: Yes but you don't eat – do you eat them together?

H: Mmmm

T: Maple syrup on bacon?

H: All together?

T: Really?

H: Yes

T: Right

H: You've not lived!

T: Obviously I -

H: Pancake, maple syrup, bacon and sometimes egg with it. Really?

T: No I usually have a bit of temporal separation

H: I love it. Now I want to go back to the fact that – we were touching on the fact that we are quite exotic here, you know, the Indian curry is one of our favourite dishes, but you still would say that we are stuck in our ways. What about these surprising combinations? Because there are now so many different flavours being bought together, you would say wow, on paper that sounds horrendous but if you are brave enough to try it actually it tastes lovely. How do you actually get somebody to that stage of -

T: I think there are all sorts of interesting possibilities and – I mean some work, and some work for everyone, and others work for a few people and some don't work at all. It's all trial and error in a way, and I think once – you have to be adventurous and be prepared to try anything once. I mean the fact is our palettes are there feeding us with sensory information, and it's – you can enhance that experience by playing a different tune. In other words by activating different taste buds and different nasal receptors, and so it's like being experimental. Who knows what the result will be, and clearly you know some of these new crisps, they have some interesting combinations which will – are breaking new territory as it were, and some people love them.

H: And what a great way actually to get people to taste new flavours through a crisp! Universally recognised! You go to a party there are chips and dips and then someone's who quite a fussy eater then is trying something really quite unusual aren't they?

T: Yes they are and it's an interesting way of doing it. I mean we have here on the table some interesting combinations, and I would say that basil for example, this is a wonderful herb, it has a fantastic aromatic smell which I absolutely love

H: It is one of my favourites

T: You can eat it raw, you can add it – well to mozzarella for example, it's a very, very good compliment to that

H: To linguine

T: Almost anything

H: Roast it in the oven with chicken – I love it

T: Raw in salads. So you know that is – you know herbs are things that people are beginning to experiment with, and there's a huge range of herbs and tastes and flavours in herbs, just waiting to be mixed with some of our staple favourites, you know so go out there and experiment

H: Absolutely. And you can grow your own these days, very easy to do just that. Thank you so much, I must admit I'm really quite hungry now, so I'm going to say goodbye to you lot so I can sit here and eat chocolate and crisps, and maybe some buffalo mozzarella if you want to join me! Thank you very much. If you do have any questions or you'd like some further information, maybe you want to try some exciting new flavours – check out the Sensations website, and that is sensationscrisps.co.uk. I'll see you soon. Bye bye