Review | Rachel Herz’s new food-science book can help your dinner taste better

Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food
by Rachel Herz
W.W. Norton

4/5 stars

Don’t bother turning to the latest celebrity chef for advice on how to eat healthily or happily – consult your nearest psychologist of the senses. That is Rachel Herz, who cooks up appetising insights into the science of eating.

Herz, “a sensory and cognitive neuro­scientist”, sniffs, gazes at and feels what most might consider merely fuel for our bodies. But any apparent obsessive weird­ness is forgotten when Herz delves into how taste affects emotions and behaviour – and how marketing companies can exploit the link; why hot red chilli pepper is beneficial to health, according to Chinese studies; why you can buy bacon-scented underwear sold with the slogan “it’s like a hot frying pan in your pants”; and why the weight of a bowl can make the yogurt it contains seem desirable or unpalatable.

Understanding our complex, senses-based relationship with food is, Herz believes, the key to a “healthier and more satisfying relationship” with it. Here, she has produced that rare thing: a book that can make your dinner taste better. (Oh, and tests show mono­sodium glutamate doesn’t cause “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, although salt might have something to do with it.)

Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts
by Alexander Langlands
W.W. Norton