The Chemistry of Food & Taste | Dr. Harold McGee

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
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 discuss 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. So if you're a seasoned cook or perhaps you only know how to make a few basic dishes or if your version of cooking is basically a protein shake and some oatmeal, this discussion with Harold McGee will let you understand the essential chemistry of food and cooking and how to prepare food that is far more enjoyable. As I said before, I love to eat and this discussion taught me how to make the foods I love so much meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, starches, etc. All taste far better. And since eating is a big part of life, not just a way to support our health, I'm certain that everyone will glean useful knowledge and practical tools from Dr. McGee. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Harold McGee. Dr. Harold McGee, welcome.

**Harold McGee** (2:23)
Thank you, Dr. Huberman.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:26)
I, like most people, love to eat. I also love food. I love the look of it. I love the smell of it. I love the anticipation of eating. And you've had a truly unique career. We'll talk a little bit more about your background later, but you had such a unique career focusing on the chemistry of food, food interactions, and I must say, even just knowing a little bit about your work, you've changed the way that I think about even like the sorts of metals that I might use to prepare my food, because it turns out these things are all impacting one another in not just small ways, but really profound ways that impact our experience of food and taste. So just to kick things off, is there any one wild food interaction chemistry fact that you just particularly find interesting?

**Harold McGee** (3:19)
When I started writing my book about the chemistry of cooking, I didn't know that much about cooking or about chemistry. I was kind of learning on the fly, which was part of the fun. And I read when I was writing about eggs, that if you're going to make a foam of egg whites to make a meringue or a souffle, so you put the egg whites in a bowl and you whisk them until they essentially form a solid from that liquid, a solid consisting of air bubbles trapped in the liquid. And that makes it act like a solid. Amazing kind of transformation. And when I was looking at what cooks had said about this process, they said you should use a copper bowl to do that whipping. And so I looked in the chemistry of eggs literature, of which there was a fair amount, actually, for some kind of explanation as to why that might be the case. And couldn't find one. And so I decided, well, it's probably an old cook's tale, somebody who had a copper bowl and used that and thought that was better. And so I didn't think anything more about it until I was preparing my book for publication, looking for cheap illustrations, because I couldn't afford good ones. And I found an old engraving of an 18th century French kitchen. And there was a boy acting as though he was whipping something in a bowl. And the bowl kind of looked like our modern copper bowls, with a little ring to hang the bowl on the wall. And there was a key that came along with the illustrations. And the key actually said, whipping eggs in a copper bowl to make pastries. So I thought, if the French have been doing it for hundreds of years, maybe there's something to this. Maybe I should actually test it. Which was a really important lesson for me. Test everything. I gulped and bought a copper bowl because they're expensive.