Eating is our most common behavior. We normally do it every day throughout our lives. Scientists over the past 20 years have elucidated how our urge to eat is largely controlled by hormones, that turn on when we are hungry and off when we are full. But this hormonal control doesn’t explain why we like certain foods and not others; why we may crave too much of what we like or too little of what we don’t like. To address these questions, a new science of eating is emerging that focuses on food flavors. A common misconception is that the foods contain the flavors. Foods do contain the flavor molecules, but the flavors of those molecules are actually created by our brains. If we are to eat healthfully and avoid the many chronic diseases that are affected by poor diet and nutrition, it is important that we learn how the brain creates the flavors that we experience—in short, we are embarking on a new scientific endeavor that I have called neurogastronomy.
I have been led to this new field by working on how the brain creates images of smells. These findings and other studies from laboratories around the world are radically changing the common view of the sense of smell, from being one of the weakest of our senses, to being, through its role in flavor, one of the most important in our daily lives. This work is leading to a new concept of a unique human brain flavor system, perhaps the most extensive behavioral system in the brain, creating perceptions, emotions, memories, consciousness, language, and decisions, all centered on flavor. By combining brain studies with food studies, and drawing on the wisdom about flavor exchanged within families every time they eat together, neurogastronomy holds the promise of putting healthy eating on a new scientific basis. In this book, I draw on these studies to explain this new field and show that it holds benefits for everyone.