Charles Spence will eat just about anything. “We’ve got bee larvae ice-cream at home,” says the Oxford professor of experimental psychology in his office. They may look like maggots, but they taste good: “a little nutty, a little floral”. Besides, he adds, “this is the future”.
How to make bug-eating acceptable to westerners is a challenges that he and his team are tackling. Through his studies into how the senses interact to form our perception of flavour, Spence is quietly influencing what we eat and drink, from the output of food-industry giants (he sits on the scientific advisory board of PepsiCo and much of his lab’s work is funded by Unilever), to the menus of leading restaurants (he has collaborated with Heston Blumenthal for 12 years).
Spence and his peers have, through a line of scientific inquiry that is informally referred to as gastrophysics, studied in minute detail how we experience food and drink. Who we eat with; how food is arranged and described; the colour, texture and weight of plates and cutlery; background noise — all these things affect taste.
For example, the person in a group who orders first in a restaurant enjoys their food more. And we consume about 35 per cent more food when eating with one other person, rising to 75pc more when dining with three others.
Spence is currently helping famous brands through (often government-imposed) reductions in salt and sugar. It is in their interests, he points out, to help loyal customers stay alive for longer. Perhaps surprisingly, many have been making these reductions in secret. They do it gradually, so regular consumers don’t notice the difference from one pack to the next. “
