食物的化学与味觉 | 哈罗德·麦吉博士

欢迎收听Huberman Lab播客，我们在这里探讨科学及基于科学的日常生活工具。我是Andrew Huberman，斯坦福医学院神经生物学和眼科学教授。今天的嘉宾是Harold McGee博士。

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 Doctor. Harold McGee. Doctor.

Harold McGee是斯坦福大学教授，也是享誉全球的食品科学与烹饪化学领域作家。四十余年来，他始终致力于该领域的研究与写作。其著作独特之处在于，既能揭示食物风味形成的原理，又能指导如何提升任何饮食的滋味。和大多数人一样，我对美食的热爱近乎痴迷——这绝非夸张之辞。

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 tastes better. I like presumably most of you absolutely love to eat. For me, that's an understatement.

今日Harold将为我们揭示：从特定炊具（碗盘、锅具乃至餐具）如何改变食物风味，到诸如在苦味食物（包括咖啡）中加一撮盐就能优化其化学结构与口感的简单技巧。我们将探讨肉类烹饪中鲜味（umami）的形成机制——如何通过精准加热蛋白质激发更多风味，以及如何萃取出巧克力等食物中多酚类健康成分。还会论及葡萄酒价格与品质的争议：高价酒是否真比平价酒更美味，抑或只是营销策略？

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 discussed 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.

无论你是资深厨师、只会几道家常菜，或是仅以蛋白粉冲剂和燕麦果腹之人，这场与Harold McGee的对话都将让你洞悉食物化学的本质，学会烹制更美味的料理。正如前所述，我对进食充满热忱，而这次交流让我懂得如何让钟爱的肉类、奶酪、蔬果和淀粉类食物更加可口。既然饮食不仅是健康所需更是人生乐事，我相信每位听众都能从McGee博士这里获得实用知识与技巧。开场前需声明：本播客与我在斯坦福的教学科研职责无关。

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, etcetera, 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 Doctor. McGee. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

但这体现了我向公众免费传播科学知识的初衷。秉承此理念，本期节目含有赞助内容。现在有请Harold McGee博士。

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 Doctor. Harold McGee.

Harold McGee博士，欢迎您。谢谢，Huberman博士。

Doctor. Harold McGee, welcome. Thank you, Doctor. Huberman.

和多数人一样，我热爱进食。我痴迷食物的色相、香气，以及享用前的期待感。

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.

您的职业生涯独具一格——稍后再详谈背景——您专注食品化学与相互作用的独特研究甚至改变了我对炊具材质的认知。这些因素正以深刻方式影响着我们的饮食体验。开场请教：有没有某个令您特别着迷的食品化学互动现象？

You've had a truly unique career. We'll talk a little bit more about your background later, but you've 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 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?

当初撰写烹饪化学著作时，我对烹饪与化学知之甚少，这种边学边写的状态反而充满乐趣。在研究鸡蛋章节时发现：制作蛋白霜或舒芙蕾需将蛋清搅打至液态变固态——实质是空气被锁入液体形成泡沫结构。这种形态转变令人惊叹。而历代厨师都强调：必须使用铜碗进行搅打。

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 gonna 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 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.

于是我查阅了大量蛋类化学文献寻求解释却无果，便认定这不过是厨艺传说——可能因某位厨师恰有铜碗而误认为效果更佳。直到书籍付梓前，为节省插图成本寻找廉价素材时，发现一幅18世纪法国厨房版画：画中少年正用带挂环的铜碗（与现代铜碗形制相似）搅拌食材，随图附带的钥匙说明引起了我的注意。

And so I looked in the chemistry of eggs literature, of which there was 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 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 a an eighteenth century French kitchen. And there was a boy acting as though he was whipping something in a bowl, and the bowl kinda looked like our modern copper bowls with a little ring to hang the bowl on the on the wall, and there was a key that came along with the illustrations.

而关键点实际上说的是，用铜碗打发鸡蛋制作糕点。所以我想，既然法国人几百年来都这么做，或许其中确有道理。也许我真该验证一下，这对我而言是个重要教训——凡事都要验证。我咬牙买了个铜碗（因为它们很贵），做了对比试验，结果差异惊人。

And the key actually said, equipping 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 I gulped and bought a copper bowl because they're expensive and and did a side by side, and the difference was tremendous.

颜色不同、质地不同、口感稠度不同，完全是两种体验。正是这个发现让我意识到，那些我曾以为是老厨子迷信的说法，可能确实蕴含着科学化学原理。这对我而言是颠覆认知且改变职业生涯的经历，从此我不再想当然，凡事都要亲自尝试。

Different color, different texture, different consistency in the mouth, totally different experience. And so it was that that realization that a Cook's what what I thought might be an old Cook's tale could actually have a a kernel of scientific chemical truth to it. That to me was a mind blowing and and career changing experience because from then on, I didn't take anything for granted. I always had to give it a try.

太有意思了。我最近开始用铜制可重复使用水杯喝水。嗯哼。主要是需要个水杯时碰巧看到铜制的在售，我挺喜欢那个味道的。

Love it. I recently started drinking water out of a copper reusable bottle. Uh-huh. Mostly because I needed a water bottle, and there was one for sale where I happened to be, and it was copper. And I rather like the taste.

关于铜对健康有益的理论五花八门。我还没考证这些说法的真伪，但确实喜欢铜器的外观。铜器还用于其他食物的制备吗？特别是为了最大限度激发食物或液体风味的场合？

There are all sorts of theories about copper being better for us health wise, etcetera. I haven't explored those to see if they're actually true or if it's nonsense, but I I do like the look of it. Is copper used for the preparation of any other foods, specifically in order to extract the best flavor from those foods or or liquids?

铜器确实用于果酱制作。原因是其他材质在高温（超过沸点）环境下会干扰几乎所有成分，尤其是糖类。蔗糖分解为葡萄糖和果糖会显著改变材料特性（未必是好事），而铜能抑制这种分解。

Copper is actually used in jam making, jelly and jam making. And the reason for that is that if you use any other material, you end up messing with, actually, almost everything in there because the temperatures are pretty high. They're above the boiling point, but in particular, the sugars. And if you break sucrose down to glucose and fructose, then, you know, the the behavior of the material changes a lot, not necessarily for the better. And it turns out that copper actually inhibits the breakdown of of sucrose into glucose and fructose.

因此世代厨师——特别是法国厨师——都用铜锅制作蜜饯果酱。

And so, again, for generations, cooks French cooks in particular, have used copper bowls to make their preserves.

哇。听起来铜的用途很广泛，而人们似乎是通过某种无意识的天赋加上...

Wow. Copper is used for a variety of things, it sounds like, and people have arrived to this through what sounds like kind of an unconscious genius combined with

实验摸索出来的。当科学家开始研究烹饪时，他们有时会提出糟糕的改良建议。传统做法反而更优——科学家只有片面认知，却自以为需要'纠正'厨师的'愚昧'。19世纪中叶英美出版的某些食谱甚至会在副标题里写着...

experimentation. When scientists got interested in cooking, they sometimes made claims and and suggested changes that in fact were terrible ideas. The traditional way of doing things was actually much better. They had come up with a partial understanding of what was going on, and on the basis of that partial understanding, decided that they needed to correct cooks who, of course, weren't as smart as they were and get them to change. And so you can see in the middle of the nineteenth century, some cookbooks published in in England and The US having a subtitle.

那个年代流行长副标题，比如'本书食谱尽可能应用了李比希博士的理论'。李比希虽是生化天才，但在烹饪领域过度自信而犯错——厨师们才更懂行。

You know, the back in the day, long subtitles were were enjoyed. And so this subtitle would be in which the theories of doctor Liebig have been as much as possible applied in in the recipes. And Liebig was he was a genius biochemist, but on cooking, he kind of took his genius for granted and was wrong. The the cooks knew better. Yeah.

我

I

我特别喜欢‘无意识天才’这个概念——一群没有接受过化学等特定领域系统严格训练的人，通过实验竟能发现某些真理，尽管他们并不理解这些真理背后的机制。是的，我认为当今健康与营养领域的许多矛盾正源于此。有些论文揭示了机制，但临床试验却无法复现；而现实中有些人实践的方法虽无同行评审研究支持，却让人感觉他们可能摸到了门道。你懂我说的吗？

love this notion of unconscious genius that a field of people who are experimenting without any formal rigorous coursework in a given area like chemistry can arrive at truths without understanding the mechanistic basis of those truths. Yeah. I think a lot of what we face nowadays in the sphere of health and nutrition is about that conflict. There are papers identifying mechanisms, but then they don't play out in clinical trials, which is the And then there are people in the real world who are doing things for which there's really no peer reviewed research, but you get the sense that maybe they're onto something. You know?

这形成了专业知识与现实成效之间非常有趣的交汇点。没错。有时甚至是两者的碰撞。我想稍作休息，感谢我们的赞助商Eight Sleep。

So it's a very interesting intersection of expertise and and real world results. Yes. You know? Or sometimes collision of of the two. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor Eight Sleep.

Eight Sleep生产智能床垫罩，具备制冷、加热和睡眠追踪功能。确保优质睡眠的最佳方法之一就是调节睡眠环境的温度。因为人体要进入并保持深度睡眠，体温实际上需要降低1-3度；而要醒来时感觉神清气爽，体温又需回升1-3度。Eight Sleep会根据您的个性化需求，整夜自动调节床铺温度。

Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs.

Eight Sleep刚推出最新款Pod five，具备多项重要新功能。其中一项叫‘自动驾驶’——这个AI引擎会学习您的睡眠模式，根据不同睡眠阶段调整环境温度。它还能在您打鼾时抬高头部，并通过其他调整优化睡眠。Pod five底座还内置与App同步的扬声器，可播放助眠与恢复音频。

Eight Sleep has just launched their latest model, the Pod five, and the Pod five has several new important features. One of these new features is called autopilot. Autopilot is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It also elevates your head if you're snoring and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. The base on the Pod five also has an integrated speaker that syncs to the Eight Sleep app and can play audio to support relaxation and recovery.

音频库包含多个NSDR（非睡眠深度休息）引导语，是我与Eight Sleep合作录制的。NSDR通过音频引导您完成深度身体放松配合简单呼吸练习，能缓解轻度睡眠不足的负面影响，并提高半夜醒后再次入睡的能力。这是人人首次使用就能受益的强大工具。访问eightsleep.com/huberman可享新款Pod五最高350美元优惠。

The audio catalog includes several NSDR non sleep deep rest scripts that I worked on with Eight Sleep to record. If you're not familiar NSDR involves listening to an audio script that walks you through a deep body relaxation combined with some very simple breathing exercises. NSDR can help offset some of the negative effects of slight sleep deprivation and NSDR gets you better at falling back asleep should you wake up in the middle of the night. It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod five.

Eight Sleep配送范围覆盖墨西哥、阿联酋等全球多国。重申一次：eightsleep.com/huberman立省350美元。本期节目也由Our Place赞助。Our Place生产我最爱的锅具厨具。令人震惊的是，80%不粘锅及厨房用品仍含PFAS等永久性有毒化合物。正如我之前在播客讨论过的，这些特氟龙等永久化学物质与激素紊乱、肠道菌群失调、生育问题等重大健康风险相关。

Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and The UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 Today's episode is also brought to us by Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFAS or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before in this podcast, these PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems.

因此避免接触这些物质非常重要。这正是我推崇Our Place的原因——其产品采用最高品质材料，完全不含PFAS等毒素。我尤其钟爱他们的钛金恒久专业锅，这是首款零化学涂层的不粘锅。

So it's really important to try and avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all completely PFAS and toxin free. I especially love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first nonstick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating.

它采用纯钛材质，意味着不含永久性有害化学物质，且不会随时间降解或失去不粘性。外观也很精美。我几乎每天早晨都用它煎蛋——独特设计能让鸡蛋完美烹制且完全不粘。

Instead it uses pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and does not degrade or lose its nonstick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan.

我还用它煎汉堡和牛排，能给肉类完美焦痕却依然不粘，清洗轻松甚至可进洗碗机。我简直离不开它。Our Place现已推出全套采用革命性钛金不粘技术的专业厨具。访问fromourplace.com/huberman并使用优惠码Huberman，即可选购无毒耐用的锅具。

I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe. I love it and I basically use it constantly. Our place now has a full line of titanium pro cookware that uses its first of its kind titanium nonstick technology. So if you're looking for nontoxic long lasting pots and pans, go to fromourplace.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout.

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Right now, Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season. You can get up to 30% off all products now through 05/12/2025. With a hundred day risk free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can try Our Place with zero risk and see why more than 1,000,000 people have made the switch to Our Place Kitchenware. Again, that's from ourplace.com/huberman to get up to 30% off. As I mentioned before, I love to eat, and we could talk about any of the different major food groups as an exploration of the chemistry of food.

但我认为其中更有趣的是热量与食物的结合。对吧？嗯。经常有人问我，比如微波加热是否安全之类的问题。最近还有人问我，我回答说，是的，微波炉确实是安全的。

But I think one of the more interesting ones is the combination of heat and food. Right? Mhmm. And very often people will ask me, you know, like, is microwaving safe and things like that. And I've didn't ask me anything recently where I said, yes, indeed, microwaves are safe.

你可能不想直接站在它前面，以防金属网保护罩的效果不如预期。不过，它确实是从内部加热食物。但我们有各种不同的加热食物的方法。我们还有加热后冷却食物的方式，以增强食物的风味。说到热量在食物中的应用，我们对它的历史了解多少？我猜最初应该是火。

You probably don't want to stand right in front of it in case the the mesh protector isn't isn't as effective as it might be. But, yeah, it's heating things up from the inside. But we have all these different ways to heat up food. And we have ways to heat food and then cool food as a way to enhance the flavor of food. When it comes to the use of heat in food, what do we know about the history of the use of I imagine it was fire first.

但这是一个非常广泛的话题。那么，在化学层面上，热量与食物相互作用的有趣方式有哪些，让我们能更享受食物？

But this is a vast, you know, topic. But what are some of the interesting ways in which heat interacts with food at the chemical level to allow us to enjoy that food more?

是的。在人类学文献中，当然重点是增加热量摄入，以及能够更高效地消化原本难以消化的物质。这是实用的一面。但我认为，如果火的使用不能让食物变得更美味，它就不会流行起来。事实上，早期的人们可能已经学会将特定的感官体验与食物的营养价值甚至安全性联系起来。

Yeah. So in the anthropological literature, of course, the focus is on increasing caloric intake and being able to consume materials that we wouldn't otherwise be able to consume as efficiently. So that's that's the sort of practical side. But my feeling is that the use of fire wouldn't have caught on if it didn't make foods delicious more delicious than they'd been in the first place at the same time. And and in fact, probably, people early on learned to associate particular sensory experiences with the nutritional value of what it was they were eating and maybe even the safety.

因为，如果你猎杀了一头猛犸象，会有很多剩余食物。你怎么处理它们，以免变质并在之后让你生病？所以，加热食物的一大好处是，热量会重新排列食物的构成材料。在许多情况下，它将大分子分解成更小的分子，让我们能够通过味觉和嗅觉感知。蛋白质、碳水化合物、脂肪，这些是我们认为构成食物的成分，但它们都是大分子。

Because, you know, if you kill a mammoth, you've got a lot of leftovers. And what do you do with them so that they don't spoil and and make you sick later on? So the the terrific thing about the application of heat to the foods in general is that they heat kind of takes the materials of which the food is made and rearranges them. And in many cases, breaks molecules down into smaller molecules that that we can actually detect with our senses of taste and smell. So proteins, carbohydrates, fats, that's what we think of as constituting food, but they're all macromolecules.

它们太大了，我们无法直接感知。因此，烹饪最重要的作用之一就是将这些大分子分解成足够小的分子，让我们能够通过味觉和嗅觉感知并享受。我认为我们的感官就是为了被刺激而存在的。所以，在很多情况下，即使刺激处于愉悦的边缘，甚至稍微不愉快，我们仍然享受感官被刺激的感觉。烹饪在这方面做得非常出色。

They're they're way too big for us to experience directly. And so one of the things about cooking that's that's most important is that cooking will take those macromolecules and break down enough of them to produce small molecules that we can detect with our senses of taste and smell and and enjoy simply for that reason. You know, we have my my feeling is that we have our senses for them to be stimulated. And so in many cases, even if the if the stimulation is borderline pleasurable or maybe even slightly unpleasurable, we still enjoy the fact that we're being stimulated, that something is going on with our senses of taste and smell. And cooking does that in spades.

它将这些原本无味无嗅的分子转化为各种风味，具体取决于原始材料。

It takes these these molecules with no taste or smell and turns them into bouquets of various kinds depending on the original material.

当我想到一块牛排时，如果我生吃一口，冷的时候和室温时的味道会非常不同。而生牛排对我来说并不开胃，稍微烹饪一下，尤其是外面煎一下，就会变得非常美味。再煮一会儿，比如三分熟，外面煎得恰到好处。我想他们称之为匹兹堡式焦香。嗯。

And when I think about a piece of steak, and if I were to take a bite of it raw, it would taste very different cold versus room temperature. And then raw steak, which to me is not appetizing, cooked even just a bit, especially if it were seared on the outside, now becomes pretty darn good. Cook it a little bit more, like medium rare, with a really nice sear on the outside. I think they call it Pittsburgh char. Uh-huh.

任何喜欢牛排外焦里嫩的人，如果厨师手艺好，匹兹堡式焦香绝对美味。那么，这里发生了什么？你说热量改变了分子结构。但这些变化如何让我们尝到更多味道，而不仅仅是不同？因为如你所说，生牛排相当平淡。

Anyone that likes the outside of the steak, really nice nice and charred, the inside rare, it's Pittsburgh char, if the chef knows what they're doing, is absolutely delicious. So what's happening there? I mean, you said that heat changes the molecular structure. But what about those changes allow us to taste it more, not just differently? Because as you said, like like raw steak is pretty bland.

我是说，大多数人可能觉得它有点恶心，但相比烹饪后的牛排，它也很平淡。发生了什么？牛排中释放出了什么？

I mean, it's I mean, most of us probably think of that as kind of gross, but it's also kind of bland compared to when when it's cooked. What's happening? What's being released into the into the steak?

是的。具体来说，组织中的物质——以肉类为例主要是蛋白质和脂肪这些大分子，这些对我们感官而言过于庞大的分子结构——会在加热过程中分解。因为热量就是能量，能量会使物质产生运动。它剧烈搅动食物表面的分子，使其分裂成极其微小的碎片。正是这些碎片在我们咬下时被感知到。

Yeah. So what what happens is that the materials of the tissue, and in the case of meat, it's mostly protein and fat, those macromolecules, large molecules that are too big for our senses to to register, get broken apart, and that's because heat is energy. Energy agitates things. It agitates molecules at the surface of the food enough to break them apart into much, much smaller pieces. And it's those pieces that we're that we're experiencing when we take a bite.

这些碎片不仅体积微小，还具有反应活性，能相互发生反应，也能与食物周围的氧气反应。比如对比鞑靼牛肉和匹兹堡式焦香牛排散发的香气成分，前者即使用仪器也几乎检测不到什么，而后者则会产生大量挥发性分子（这些正是我们鼻子能捕捉的），以及足够小到能刺激味蕾的分子。

The pieces are not only much smaller, but they're also reactive so that they can react with each other. They can react with oxygen in the air surrounding the food. And so we end up with you know, if you if you did a an analysis of the aroma coming off of some steak tartare and coming off of a a Pittsburgh char, you're gonna have very, very little noticeable even with instrumentation. But off of the the steak, a tremendous amount of volatile molecules, which are the ones that our our noses detect. And then also molecules that are small enough to stimulate our taste receptors.

我们已知有少数几种味觉受体能感知甜、酸、咸、苦、鲜味。虽然日常生活中这些味道无处不在，但当你高温烹饪肉类并破坏其表层分子结构时，产生的分子即使本身并非糖类或盐分也能刺激这些受体。我更愿意将其视为热能的炼金术——通过能量输入将食材转化为令人愉悦的形态。

So we have a handful, and they we we think of them as responding to sweet, sour, salt, bitter, umami tastes. We we encounter those tastes in all kinds of things in everyday life, But when you cook a piece of meat to a high temperature and do a good amount of damage to that outer molecular surface, you generate molecules that can stimulate those receptors even though they themselves are not sugars or salts or or whatever. What I like to think of is just the alchemy of of heat. You know, you you take this material, you add energy, and you transform it in ways that are delightful to us.

所以按我的理解，虽然生肉分子通常不会刺激甜味受体，但煎牛排时由于分子结构改变——通过缩小体积和改变构型（具体取决于烹饪方式）——就开始能激发甜味感知了？是的。而且同时还会产生...

So if I understand correctly, even though the molecules in meat typically wouldn't stimulate the sweet receptor, when you cook steak, it starts to stimulate the sweet receptors because of the change in those molecules. You've you've you've reduced their size, and you've changed their their configuration, depending on which recipe you use. Yes. And and you're also generating

原本生肉中含有的分子数量（以现代分析技术都难以精确统计），在加热作用下会呈几何级增长。热能拆解原始材料，促使分子间相互反应，最终爆发出前所未有的感官信息量。

where once you might have had, you know, the well, these days, our enumeration of molecules has gotten so good that who knows exactly how many are in that raw piece of meat. But whatever that number is, it's multiplied many fold by the application of heat simply because it's taking those materials, breaking them apart, getting them to react with each other, and the result is just an explosion of sensory information that simply wasn't there before.

必须聊聊鲜味了——不只是因为这名字有趣，更因这种受体能结合产生鲜味感的分子。铸铁锅里炖肉的精华汁液，我甚至会偷偷用铲子刮着吃，那简直是蛋白质美味的巅峰。觉得恶心的人根本不懂，那浓缩的美味程度简直爆表。

We have to talk about umami. I mean, and not just because the name is fun to say, but this receptor that seems to bind molecules that give us the sensation, at least in part of savoriness. I mean, to me, few things are as delicious as the braise that comes off of meat in a cast iron pan, that I would literally scrape that stuff up onto the spatula and eat it if no one's looking. And anyone that thinks that that sounds gross, I mean, it is absolutely delicious. I mean, it is like pinnacle of why we eat protein.

这就是为什么我觉得它如此美味。单位体积的风味强度高得离谱。但有趣的是，如果两小时后回来尝那些焦化碎屑，会感觉像被揍了一拳——味道糟糕得像在舔两天前的烧烤架。

That's why it feels so darn delicious to me. And the intensity of flavor per unit of whatever that stuff is so high. But then here's the thing. If you were to wait two hours and come back and pick up one of those little black crumbs of braise and put it in your mouth, it would kind of like punch you in the mouth. And it tastes like kind of awful, like you were licking the grill of a barbecue from two days before.

完全不好吃。那么炖煮过程和鲜味机制到底怎么回事？虽然很多非肉类食材也能激发鲜味，但这确实是食物风味中最迷人的维度之一。

Not good. So what's going on with with braise and with umami? And we can talk about a lot of non meat ways to stimulate umami, but such an interesting aspect to food and taste.

确实。七十年代我开始写烹饪文章时，除了发现国的日本科学家，根本没人相信这种味觉存在。

Yeah. Yeah. It is. And something that when I started writing about cooking in the seventies, no one believed it existed except for the Japanese scientists who were living in the country where it was discovered in

没错。据我所知他们是最早完成鲜味受体分子克隆的团队。

the first place. That's right. They were the first to molecularly clone the umami receptor as far as I know.

他们也是最早提出存在一种既非甜、酸、咸、苦的味觉感受的人，正因如此，西方世界几十年来一直不相信他们的说法。当我开始写作时，这就是主流观点——日本人那种关于某种基础味觉的奇怪想法根本是错误的。我在波士顿参加过几次会议，记得化学家们对此争论不休。首先，我完全理解你说的那种让你暗自享受又带点负罪感的味道，就像你提到的会趁没人时偷偷刮下来吃的那种。

And they were also the first to claim that there was a sensation taste sensation that was not sweet, sour, salt, or bitter, which is why they were disbelieved in the West for for decades and decades. And when I as I say, when I started writing, that was the standard view. Japanese have this weird idea of something, a a basic taste that's just simply not correct. And I I went to a couple of meetings in Boston and remembered this being debated among chemists. First, I'll just say that I know exactly what you mean about the that flavor of something that you apparently feel guilty about enjoying because, you know, you said you would scrape it up when no one was looking.

我成长在一个四兄妹的家庭。母亲偶尔会做烤鸡，切成块的鸡肉在烤箱里烤制时，肉汁会滴落到烤盘上形成焦褐层。饭后，我们几个孩子总会排队每人分一勺刮下来的焦脆——那真是美味至极。

When I was growing up, there were we have a family of four children. My mother would occasionally make a an oven baked chicken cut up into pieces, and the drippings would drip down to the pan and brown. And after the meal, my siblings and I would line up for a spoonful of the scrapings. Delicious.

我我我仿佛能闻到也尝到一点。没错。那些对此皱眉的人，肯定没尝过真正炖煮入味的肉汁——当然前提是你吃动物蛋白。那绝对是人间至味。

I I I can smell it and taste it just a bit. Yeah. Anyone that's cringing at that, you have not tasted proper braise from meat. It's assuming you consume animal proteins. It is absolutely delicious.

是的是的。这让我瞬间回到普鲁斯特式的记忆闪回...长话短说，后来日本人的观点被西方标准证实是正确的。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can I can It it just takes me back to Proustian to go back to that? So to make a long story short, the Japanese were shown to be correct by Western standards.

他们始终坚信自己是对的，但在西方标准下获得确证，是两千年初二月发现谷氨酸受体的时候。终于西方科学家接受了这个事实，而厨师们早就接受了——因为他们一直在寻找让食物更美味的方法，早就听说过这个理论。

They always knew they were correct, but by Western standards, they were proved to be correct when a receptor for glutamate was discovered in the February. Yeah. Early two thousands. So finally, Western scientists were on board. Meanwhile, cooks had been on board for a long time because they're always looking for ways to make their food more delicious, and they'd heard about this.

有些人专程去日本学习带回了经验。鲜味这种感受相比甜酸咸苦更难描述，你们用savory（鲜香）这个词很贴切，算是通用术语。要进一步形容的话，它有种饱满感和持久性...

Some went to Japan. They came back. And so umami is a sensation that's a little bit difficult to to describe compared to sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. Savory, I think, is the word you use, and that's the sort of the the the usual nomenclature. When you try to characterize it further, it's it's a a feeling of fullness and length.

这种风味非常浓郁，而且会在口腔里持续...

So the the flavor, there's just a lot of it there, and it sticks with you for

持续很久，这就是你们说的持久性？

for a while. That's what we mean by length?

没错。

Yeah.

明白了。我感觉它不止存在于口腔——虽然我对美食不算讲究，虽然爱吃，但不敢自称美食家。

Got it. Yeah. I feel like also it it doesn't occur just in my mouth. And I'm not very nuanced about food. I mean, I love food, but I'm not somebody who can really I don't consider myself a food connoisseur.

我只知道自己喜欢什么、不喜欢什么。但我觉得富含鲜味的食物带来的体验会弥漫至全身，就像一场颅内高潮。嗯哼，甚至可能延伸到胸腔。

I just know what I like and what I don't like. But I feel like taste of something with a lot of umami flavor actually spreads throughout the body. It's like a whole head experience. Uh-huh. Maybe even down to the chest.

鲜味感受并不局限于舌头的某个区域——稍后我们会讨论这个关于味蕾分区的迷思。考虑到鲜味受体激活与蛋白质美味度紧密相关，而蛋白质在进化史上可能长期稀缺，不禁让人怀疑是否存在某种奖励机制在说：这很珍贵。毕竟人类祖先常需冒着危险才能获取鲜味刺激。

It's not restricted to a location on the tongue or something like that. Later, we'll talk about this myth about restricted receptors on the tongue. But yeah, one has to wonder if because the umami receptor stimulation is so closely tied to savoriness and protein, and because protein was presumably scarce in evolutionary history, whether or not there's some reward pathways that are like, oh, this is good to Because people had to work really hard under dangerous conditions often to get umami stimulation.

没错。根据我的文献阅读，我们对嗅觉味觉机制的了解其实微乎其微。

Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's right. And I I would also say that from at least my reading of the the literature, we only know a tiny, tiny bit about what's going on when we smell things and taste things.

目前仅知初始步骤：舌面存在对谷氨酸产生反应的受体，这种氨基酸与鲜味感知相关。但后续机制？仍是谜团。何况谷氨酸本身就是体内重要的信号分子。

So we know the the initial step. There's a receptor on our tongue that responds to glutamate, which which is associated with this sensation. What happens after that? Who knows? And and there's also the fact that glutamate is an important molecule in the body for signaling.

嗯...谁知道味蕾受体与身体其他部位会有什么交互作用？过去十年间，研究者还在消化道发现了所有基本味觉的受体。

Mhmm. So who knows what kind of, you know, crosstalk there might be between the the receptor on the tongue and the rest of the body. And people have also, in the last, what, ten years or so, discovered taste receptors for all the tastes in our GI tract.

这太有趣了！或许这就是鲜味感知更深远的原因——它们可能分布在食道，甚至胃部。对对，这解释得通。

Yeah, that is so interesting, and so important too, because, oh, maybe that's the sensation that things are, that the umami taste is much deeper. Yeah. Is that they're in the esophagus, and presumably maybe even into the stomach. Yeah. Yeah.

疯狂的是，听说老虎的鲜味受体数量是人类万倍，却完全缺失甜味受体（虽然这种说法通常需要考证）。不过想想看——若能当一天老虎体验那种肉食快感...简直难以想象！但这也引出新问题：缺失甜味受体会否彻底改变肉类风味？

Wild. I heard that tigers have something like 10,000 fold more umami receptors than humans, but they have no sweet receptors. I don't know if that's true. Usually when you hear something like that, it's likely to be not completely true, but who knows? We look it up, and someone will tell us in the comments.

比如品尝烤鸡滴落的浓稠酱汁时，甜味受体是否参与了美味构建？若仅有鲜味受体，或许根本尝不出好滋味？食物的化学作用是否不仅发生在食材本身...

Which upon hearing made me immediately want to try being a tiger for one day. Like, I can't even imagine how good meat tastes to carnivores that have that density of umami receptors. Yeah. But it raises another question too, which is assuming that's true, would the absence of the sweet receptor perhaps make meat taste completely different? In other words, is there crosstalk between these receptors so that when you eat something that's like this spoonful of braised drippings off the roasted chicken.

...也发生在口腔里？

Presumably, there's a some stimulation of the sweet receptors. If you only had umami receptors, maybe it wouldn't taste good at all. Is the chemistry of food occurring in the mouth, not just in the

精妙的提问！虽然难以全面解答，但可以确定：当肉类经过高温烹饪产生褐变时——这种颜色变化源于美拉德反应（以那位并未完全破解该机制的学者命名）。本质上是蛋白质碎片与碳水化合物及脂肪间的复杂反应。

food itself? Wonderful questions. I don't know where to begin exactly, except to say that when you brown a piece of meat or just cook it to a high temperature so that the outside of the meat changes color. That that color change is an indication of some a group of reactions called the Maillard reactions after the guy who actually didn't quite address this, but he got he got his name associated with it. Anyway, the Maillard reactions are essentially reactions between fragments of proteins and fragments of carbohydrates and fats.

这些反应路径确实非常复杂，至今尚未完全解析，但它们会生成多种不同类型的产物。其中就包括糖类。所以你最初并不一定需要糖分，但如果有了蛋白质和脂肪，只需通过加热的炼金术就能制造出糖分。嗯。

And the reaction pathways are really complicated. They still haven't been worked out completely, but they generate a bunch of different classes of products. And among those products are sugars. So you don't start out necessarily with sugars, but if you've got proteins and fats, you can make sugars simply with the alchemy of applying heat. Mhmm.

这就是部分原理所在。我认为老虎确实错过了熟肉带来的独特风味维度。既有烹饪过程中的化学变化，也有品尝享用时的化学反应。事实证明后者本身就足够复杂——首先，我们向感官系统呈现的是它们将接触到的最复杂物质。自然界不会产生这种复杂组合。

So that's part of what's going on. And I would say that, yeah, tigers are missing out because there's an interesting dimension of flavor to to meat that that has been cooked. There's the chemistry of cooking, and then there's the chemistry of enjoying, of tasting, consuming. And it turns out that that's complicated in in its own right because, first of all, we're presenting our sensory apparatus with the most complex materials that they're going to encounter. Nature does not generate this kind of complexity.

这是我们人类自己创造的，我认为这正是我们从中获得巨大乐趣的部分原因。但更奇妙的是，在口腔里还会持续发生化学变化。葡萄酒专家最早注意到这种现象，他们发现当把生葡萄放入口中品尝时——比如判断这个特定葡萄品种的特性如何影响成酒——最初只有葡萄本身的味道，但随着时间推移，其他风味会逐渐显现。

We're we're doing it for ourselves, and that's part, I think, of the of the great pleasure that we take from it. But it also turns out that in the mouth, changes can take place. And this is act it was actually first noticed by experts in wine because they found that when they put a raw grape in their mouth to taste, you know, what what what's the characteristics of the of this particular grape, and how does that carry over into the wine. What they noticed was that initially, there's just the taste of the grape. But then as they sit there, other flavors begin to come.

由于他们是品酒专家，能够辨识出这些后显风味，其中某些分子与成品葡萄酒中的成分相同。而这些变化就发生在你刚咀嚼过的口腔里。事实上，各类食物中都存在被称为'结合物'的分子——它们通常由活性分子端与某种糖类结合而成。

And because they were experts in wine tasting, they were able to figure out which ones they were, and they they were, some of them, molecules that you find in the finished wine. And it's just in your mouth. You've just chewed it. So it turns out that there are, in all kinds of foods, molecules that are called conjugates. You know, they're kind of business end of the molecule and then usually attached to a sugar of some kind.

当我们进食时，口腔中的酶会作用于这些结合物，将糖分从分子上解离出来，而剩余部分可能具有芳香特性。现在已知美拉德反应不仅产生糖类，还会生成结合物。因此口腔里进行着极其复杂的反应，这正成为提倡细嚼慢咽的最佳理由——因为你永远不知道二三十秒后口腔会出现什么新风味。放慢节奏享受每一口食物，留意这些变化，这往往是个充满惊喜的动态体验。

And when we put something in our mouth and we have enzymes in our mouth, those enzymes can go to work on things like conjugates and free up the sugar from the rest of the molecule, and the rest of the molecule can be aromatic. And it's known now that the Maillard reactions generate not only sugars but conjugates. And so there's there's just a lot going on. And it's it's, I think, one of the best arguments for enjoying your food slowly because you never know what's going to kind of show up in your mouth after, you know, twenty or thirty seconds. Slow down, enjoy every bite, and and notice what's happening because it's it's often a a really dynamic experience.

要说服人们放慢进食速度很难。但如果承诺能获得更丰富的饮食体验——而不是常见的'帮助消化'或'控制食量'这类理由——或许能更有说服力。值得一提的是，在所有感官中，我们对味觉与食物的关系拥有最强掌控力。换个说法：如果做期关于视觉训练的播客，声称通过不同视角观察世界就能获得新视觉能力...

We're gonna have a hard time convincing many people to slow down their rate of eating. However, if you promise them a richer experience of the food, and not just that they're trying to eat less or something, which is the usual reason that people hear they should chew their food, maybe improve digestion as well, they might be incentivized to do it. I should point out of all the senses, it seems taste and its relationship to food, we have more control over that experience. Let me state this differently. If I were to do a podcast on that simply by looking around the world differently, you could start to actually get new visual perceptual abilities.

这听起来很诱人，但抱歉那是不可能的。虽然通过训练能增强对特定事物的辨识力，但不会改变基础视觉能力。而味觉似乎确实具有这种可塑性。你说'放慢速度'具体指什么？减慢咀嚼频率？每口之间暂停？还是全部都要？

That'd be pretty exciting, but I'm sorry, but that's not true. It doesn't work. I mean, you could enhance your, you know, some discrimination of certain things if you were trained to look for them, but that can change your visual perceptual abilities. But with taste, it sounds like we have the ability. So when you say slow down, do you mean slow down the chewing, take pauses after bites, All of the above?

全部都要。因为即使吞咽后，口腔和咽喉仍残留物质——品酒专家发现正是这些残留物在持续变化。他们并非把葡萄含在嘴里一分钟，而是观察吞咽后的余味变化。

Yeah. All of the above. Because even after you swallow, there are residues in your mouth and at the back of your mouth, and that's what the wine experts noticed was the change in those residues. So it's not that they chewed on a grape and then kept it in their mouth for a minute. It was just what was left over.

所以残存的美味不亚于主菜本身。好吧，我要...

So the leftovers can be as delicious as the main course. Alright. I'm gonna

开始在不同食物类型间暂停进食。我有过这样的体验：当吃到特别美味的肉类、水果或蔬菜时——作为杂食者我都喜欢——那种满足感会让我暂时不想立刻吃甜食，因为不同食物风味会产生冲突。

start taking pauses between at least food types. I sometimes had the experience of eating something particularly delicious. For instance, meat, or fruit, or vegetables. I love all the the I'm an omnivore, so I love all these things. But I'm so satisfied with what I just ate that I don't want something sweet right away because of the collision that occurs between foods.

是不是只有我不喜欢甜点，却喜欢单独在其他时间享用甜点类食物？还是说我在这方面的体验就像孤岛一样独特？

Am I alone in not liking dessert, but liking dessert foods on their own at a separate time? Or am I just like on a desert island of experience here?

不，其实我完全一样。比起甜点，我宁愿多喝半杯葡萄酒来延长正餐的体验。甜食我也喜欢，但不喜欢在享用完大量咸味主餐后立即吃。我日本籍的妻子说她有专门吃甜点的另一个胃，主菜一结束就能直接开吃。但确实，我个人偏好不是这样。

No, I'm actually completely the same. I would prefer to have another half glass of wine than dessert just simply to prolong the experience of the the the main part of the meal. And desserts, sweet things, I enjoy, but not after big meal of of other things, savory things. My wife, who's Japanese, says she has a separate mouth and a separate stomach for desserts, and she can go right into it after after the the main course. But, yeah, I I prefer not to.

我感觉很多人吃晚餐只是为了等到甜点环节。我们不如聊聊用餐顺序吧。多年前我有个来自法国南部佩里戈尔的女友，那里可以说是全球美食之都之一。人们总以为法国美食在巴黎，但其实南法人对食物的认真程度超乎想象——她家会花整天时间讨论下一顿或上一顿饭。

I feel like many people eat dinner just to get to dessert. Let's actually talk about food order in the meal. Many years ago, I had a girlfriend who was from the South Of France, from the Perigord. So she grew up in what is arguably one of the food capitals of the of the planet. You know, people think French food Paris, but actually, people in the South Of France are so serious about food that her family would spend most of the day, and the night, and the meal, talking about the next meal or a previous meal.

他们甚至会用双筒望远镜寻找蘑菇。如果在邻居院子里发现一颗，会绞尽脑汁思考如何协商获取——直接偷摘是绝对禁忌。他们对食物的态度就是如此郑重其事。

They would search for mushrooms with binoculars. If they spotted one in the neighbor's yard, they were perplexed as to how to negotiate for that mushroom. You couldn't actually go get steal the mushroom. That would be a cardinal sin. I mean, they are so serious about food.

正如你所知，他们对每个细节都极其讲究。我们常为进食顺序激烈争论。她坚持先喝汤来唤醒肠胃，最后才吃沙拉。在她认知里，餐前吃沙拉简直是离经叛道。所以无论是否喜欢法餐，我认为他们确实掌握了某些饮食真谛。

Every aspect of it, as you know. And we used to get into these intense arguments about the order in which one is supposed to eat food. And in her mind, it was soup first because it actually prepares the gut, and then always salad last. This whole notion of eating salad at the beginning of a meal was like heresy to, I mean, to everything that she had known and conceptualized about food. So I have to believe that whether one likes French food or not, that they they're onto something.

从消化吸收到充分品味食物风味的角度，我们或许真该遵循：汤→开胃菜→主菜→沙拉的顺序。若不是吃全套正餐，沙拉也不该作为第一道菜。他们是对的吗？我确信她是对的——她大多数见解都是正确的。

That when it comes to digestion, when it comes to being able to really taste the full array of flavors in a food, that we probably should be doing soup first, then an appetizer, then an entree, and then salad last. And if we're not consuming an entire meal of that sort, that salad shouldn't be eaten at the beginning of a meal. Are they right? I'm pretty sure that she was right. She was right about most things.

这问题很有意思。我的答案会因听众而异——比如在中国宴席上，所有菜肴都是同时上桌的。

Very good question. And I guess my answer would depend on the audience. So and I say that because, of course, if you go to a a banquet in China, everything is served simultaneously.

真的吗？所有菜一次性摆上来？那人们会混着吃吗？

Really? They just slide it all out in front of you? Yeah. And do people eat everything and kind of mishmash?

或许会分阶段上菜，但每阶段都有十多道菜同时呈现。我会完全不知所措——确实令人应接不暇。某种程度上...（不想以偏概全）这可能是为了彰显宴席的丰盛与慷慨。

Or there may be phases, but you're presented with many, many different dishes at each phase. I would be so overwhelmed. And it is overwhelming. I I and, you know, it's partly well, I I don't want to generalize. Maybe it has to do with perhaps emphasizing the the abundance and and generosity Mhmm.

而非专注于每道菜带来的阶段性愉悦。或许法国人更注重感官体验，但菜品排序方式本就多样。法式顺序确实很有道理——我们全家曾在图卢兹乡下住过一年，邻居们午餐都享用包含所有课程的一小时正式餐宴，连学校给孩子提供的午餐也是如此。

Of the meal rather than focusing on the pleasure that you can get from each stage in it. Maybe it's maybe the French are more focused on the the sensory experience, but there are many many different ways to to sequence dishes in a meal. And I I think it does the the French way of doing it does make a lot of sense. My family and I lived in the countryside near Toulouse for a year and ate around with the neighbors and so on. And and my daughter, my aunt's son went to school where they were given a full hour for lunch, and it was a coursed lunch with all those different components.

所以我认为这确实有道理，因为先上汤有助于部分填饱肚子，这样当你进入主菜时，不需要吃太多就能感到满足。然后是沙拉，你知道沙拉会来，它能让你清爽一下，因为主菜通常比较油腻丰盛。几乎总是这样。

So it it does make sense, I think, because having the soup come early helps, among other things, partly fill your stomach so that when you then go to the main course, you don't have to eat as much in order to be satisfied. And then the salad you you know the salad is coming, and it kind of refreshes you because the main course is usually on the heavy and rich side. Almost always.

是啊。她家经常吃鹅胸配鹅肝酱。是的。顺便提一句，他们家只是中产阶级。

Yeah. Yeah. Goose breast with foie gras was not uncommon in her household. Yes. And they were a middle class home, I should mention.

所以当地人吃鹅胸配鹅肝酱并不是因为属于精英阶层，而是这在那座小镇就像火腿芝士三明治一样普通。

So it wasn't that people there were eating goose breast with foie gras because they were among the, like, elite. It was that was the ham and cheese sandwich of the of the town.

对。这些都是当地特产，那些鹅可能就在附近饲养的。嗯。所以我觉得沙拉算是给正餐收尾，让人稍微清爽一下。

Yeah. Those are those are the local products, and the the geese were probably being raised down the road. So Mhmm. Yeah. So I think the the salad kind of closes out the the main part of the meal and refreshes you a little bit.

接着如果要上甜点，你就能更好享受它，而不是被又一道油腻的菜压得喘不过气。因此我认为这种包含多道菜的就餐顺序确实很有道理。

And then if you're going to have dessert, you're ready for it rather than being overwhelmed by yet another rich, another rich course. So I think it does make a lot of sense for the for that, structure of a meal where you have those different courses.

嗯。这种清洁味蕾的概念挺有意思。但我很久没参加过会在菜品间上味觉清洁剂的饭局了。在美国八九十年代这曾流行过一阵，不过我家既不举办也不参加那种宴席。但我确实参加过几次。

Yeah. This notion of cleansing the palate is kind of an interesting one. But it's been a long time since I've been to a meal where they served a palate cleanser in between dishes. I mean, that that's something that I think in the eighties and nineties became a little bit popular in The United States and my family wasn't serving or attending those sorts of meals. But I've I've I've been to a few.

这想法很有趣。但从分子化学角度来说，真的能洗掉刚吃过的味道来准备下一道菜吗？还是更多为了表演效果？

It's kind of an interesting idea. But molecularly, chemically speaking, is is that a real thing that you're gonna wash out the flavor of what you just ate so that you can prepare for the next next item on the menu, or is it more for for show?

我觉得两者都有。具体要看情况，但味觉清洁剂通常是冷的，味道不会太强烈，常带点酸味。嗯。在一顿接连享用丰盛菜肴的高级餐厅里，用冰凉微酸的东西过渡确实合理。

I I think it's both. I I I do think that, you know, if you're and, again, depending on the the details, but palate cleansers are usually cold and, you know, not not too strong in any direction, a little bit tart often. Mhmm. So something cold and tart to break up a meal where you've gone from one kind of rich course, and you're you're about to have another rich course because it's a fancy restaurant. I think that probably does make sense.

嗯。我下一个问题更偏向人体生理学：我们都经历过味觉强度漂移——想不到更好的词了——比如习惯喝黑咖啡的人开始加奶加糖后，再喝黑咖啡会觉得特别苦。

Mhmm. Yeah. My next question is a bit more of a human physiology question, but I think we're all familiar with the kind of taste intensity drift. I can't think of a better phrase. Where, if you are used to drinking your coffee black, and you start putting a little bit of cream in it, maybe a little bit of cream and a little bit of sugar, going back to black coffee feels like a step in the really bitter direction.

嗯哼。

Uh-huh.

然后如果你开始摄入更多糖分或食用更甜的食物，似乎我们会重新设定对‘过甜’的感知阈值。这涉及各种健康影响，负面的健康影响。但这是真实存在的吗？我们真的在改变对苦味或甜味的感知阈值吗？我这么问是因为最近我养成了一种——我不愿称之为上瘾——但对可可豆的热爱。

And then if you start adding more sugar or eating sweeter foods, it seems like we reset our threshold for what we consider too sweet. There are all sorts of health implications, negative health implications around this. But is that a real thing? Are we actually changing our threshold for what we consider bitter or sweet? I ask this because recently I've developed a, I won't call it an addiction, but a love for cacao beans.

第一次咬开可可豆时，我觉得‘哇，好苦’。但现在这成了我早晨最爱的环节——抓五六颗丢进嘴里嚼，它们确实苦，但风味绝佳，还带着树皮般的口感。我发誓能尝出多酚的味道，虽然这完全是心理作用对吧？我刚才描述的情况对我来说并不罕见。

And the first time I bit into one of those, I thought, oh, those are bitter. And now it's one of my favorite parts of my morning where I'm like pop five or six of those in my mouth and munch on them, they taste bitter, but they taste so good, and they're kind of barky. They have kind of like a bark taste to them. And I swear I can taste the polyphenols, although that's all cognitive, right? So what I just described is not uncommon for me.

关于苦味和甜味的感知阈值究竟是怎么回事？它们会相互影响吗？

What is this whole thing about thresholds for bitterness and sweet? Do they interact?

没错。味觉的可塑性其实非常强。这方面最翔实的文献来自试图降低包装食品钠含量的研究。早在生物医学界呼吁减少钠摄入之前，生产商们就表示：

Yeah. Yeah. So taste is hugely malleable, as far as we can tell. And I think this is best documented in the literature trying to find ways to reduce the sodium content of of packaged goods. So manufacturers have been saying long after biomedical people were saying we should cut back on our sodium intake.

我们很乐意降低产品钠含量，但消费者不喜欢减盐后的产品。费城莫奈尔化学感官中心对此进行了系统研究，发现人们确实能逐步调整对基础味觉的阈值和偏好。他们当时聚焦盐分因为这是当务之急，但没理由认为其他味觉不适用——当你习惯某种刺激强度后，那就会成为新的基准。

We would be happy to do that in our products, but our consumers don't like our products without the level of salt that we have in them. So people at the Monel Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia did some pretty systematic studies of this. And what they found was that you can, over time, adjust thresholds and preferences for the basic tastes. They were focusing on salt because that was the issue at hand. But there's no reason to think that that's not not the case for everything, that if you become used to a particular level of stimulation, then that becomes your your new normal.

任何低于或高于这个基准的都会显得不足或过量。所以我们完全可以通过训练调整偏好，只是需要时间。莫奈尔研究持续了约两个月，虽然耗时但确实可行。

And anything below or above that is going to stand out for being not quite enough or too much. So I think the the we're perfectly capable of training ourselves to adjust our preferences. It does take time. So the Monelle study, I think, lasted maybe a couple of months. It takes time, but it's certainly doable.

现在插播一条赞助商AG1的广告。AG1是含维生素矿物质益生菌的饮品，还添加了益生元和适应原。作为深耕科研领域近三十年、同样长期关注健康健身的人，我一直在寻找提升身心健康的最佳工具。2012年（远早于我做播客时）就开始每日服用AG1，它显著改善了我的精力、专注力和整体状态。

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since. I find it improves all aspects of my health, my energy, my focus, and I simply feel much better when I take it.

AG1采用顶级原料的科学配比，并持续优化配方但不涨价。最新升级的配方基于益生菌对肠道菌群的新研究，新增多种经临床验证的益生菌株，能同时支持消化健康和免疫系统健康，改善肠道规律性并减少腹胀。若问我只能选一种补剂，那必是AG1。

AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. In fact, AG1 just launched their latest formula upgrade. This next gen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome. And it now includes several clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what that supplement would be, I always say AG1.

想尝试AG1可访问drinkag1.com/huberman。限时赠送一个月量的Omega-3鱼油及维生素D3+K2一瓶。正如我在播客中强调过的，Omega-3鱼油和维生素D3K2对情绪、脑健康、心脏健康和激素平衡等都有助益。订阅即赠上述礼品，网址drinkag1.com/huberman。本期节目也由Mattina赞助播出。

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a free one month supply of omega-three fish oil along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before on this podcast, omega-three fish oil and vitamin D3K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health, to healthy hormone status and much more. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to get a free one month supply of omega-three fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Mattina.

Mattina生产散装及即饮马黛茶。我常讨论马黛茶的益处：调节血糖、高抗氧化性、促进消化，还可能具有神经保护作用。正因如此——加上马黛茶能提供最平稳的能量与专注力提升（且无崩溃感）——它长期是我的首选咖啡因来源。当然，我也爱它的风味。

Mattina makes loose leaf and ready to drink Yerba Mate. I've often discussed Yerba Mate's benefits such as regulating blood sugar, it's high antioxidant content, and the ways that it can improve digestion. It also may have possible neuroprotective effects. It's for those reasons and the fact that Yerba Mate provides, in my opinion, the most even and steady rise in energy and focus with no crash, the Yerba Mate has long been my preferred source of caffeine. I also drink Yerba Mate because I love the taste.

尽管市面上有许多不同的马黛茶饮品，但我最钟爱的绝对是Mattina。我很高兴地告诉大家，Mattina最近推出了一系列全新口味的冷泡无糖马黛茶。有树莓味、芒果味、薄荷味、柠檬味和蜜桃味，每一种都令人惊艳。如果要选一个我的最爱，可能是芒果或树莓口味，但说实话，我实在无法只选一种。所以我基本上每天都会轮流品尝每一种口味。

And while there are lot of different Yerba Mate drinks out there, my absolute favorite is Mattina. I'm excited to share that Mattina has recently launched a series of new flavors of their cold brew all zero sugar Yerba Mate. There's a raspberry flavor, there's a mango flavor, there's a mint flavor, there's a lemon flavor, and a peach flavor, and they are absolutely incredible. If I had to pick one that's my absolute favorite, it would probably be the mango or the raspberry, but frankly, I cannot pick just one. And I end up having basically one of each every single day.

再次强调，所有这些口味都采用最优质的有机原料制作，且完全零糖分。如果你想尝试Mattina，可以访问drinkmattina.com/huberman。重申一遍，网址是drinkmattina.com/huberman。我很久以前就不再吃所谓的'垃圾食品'了，而且已经完全失去了兴趣。与此同时，我对草莓、蔬菜、肉类、鱼类、鸡蛋、米饭和燕麦片的喜爱却与年俱增。

Again, all of these flavors are made with the highest quality ingredients, all organic, and again, all zero sugar. If you'd like to try Mattina, you can go to drinkmattina.com/huberman. Again, that's drinkmattina.com/huberman. I stopped eating quote unquote junk food a long time ago, and I've totally lost interest. In parallel to that, I enjoy strawberries and vegetables and meat and fish and eggs and rice and oatmeal so much more with each successive year.

嗯。我认为部分原因在于人们对美味定义的重新塑造。但我也感觉自己对食物的体验正变得越来越丰富，而非越来越差。这既有趣又有点反直觉。我们是否有证据表明，食用更接近其原始状态的食物时，比起将大量风味混合（这本质上是加工食品的做法），你能从味觉体验中获得更多？

Mhmm. And I think it's in part because of this reshaping of what one considers flavorful. But I also feel like my experience of food is getting richer and richer, as opposed to worse and worse. So it's kind of interesting and kind of counterintuitive. Do we have any evidence that if you eat foods closer to their, let's just say in their unadulterated form, that you get more out of the taste experience than if you are combining lots and lots of flavors, which is essentially what processed foods are.

是的。我无法具体指出文献中的哪章哪节，但从常识来看，如果你从草莓开始，然后添加香草精、糖分等一大堆东西——这正是加工食品试图做的——用压倒性的感官刺激来震撼你的口腔，让你想要重复这种体验，而不是放慢节奏享受细微差别。自然界给了我们草莓、蓝莓、燕麦等神奇食材，本可以细细品味一分钟并真正享受。但若将这些神奇原料仅仅当作配料，为了刺激而非欣赏其本身价值而与其他大量物质混合，那么你基本上就放弃了饮食的大部分乐趣，只是在用能给你瞬间味觉冲击后就消失的东西填饱肚子。

Yeah. I I can't point to, you know, chapter and verse in the in the literature on this, but I think it just makes common sense that if you're going to start with strawberries and then add a bunch of other things, you know, vanilla extract and sugars and who knows what else in order to essentially, as processed foods try to do, just kind of wow your mouth with an overwhelming sensation that you then want to repeat rather than slowing down and enjoying the nuances. The natural world gives us these amazing ingredients, like strawberries and blueberries and oats and and so on. And then to to take those amazing ingredients, which you can kind of savor for, you know, a minute at a time and and really enjoy, to to take those ingredients and make them ingredients rather than things in themselves and combine them with lots of other things for the purpose of stimulation rather than the purpose of appreciating and enjoying those individual components, then you're kind of, giving up, I would say, most of the pleasure of eating. You're just fueling yourself with stuff that, is going to give you an immediate hit of flavor and then be gone.

而那些食物里究竟含有什么已无从知晓。它可能曾经是草莓，但如今已被其他成分掩盖。与此同时，生活在这个星球上的奇迹之一就是草莓，以及植物为取悦我们所精心准备的丰富多样的食材。将这份馈托付给那些只追求以最低成本最快速度生产的制造商，我认为是个错误。

And what what was in that food is opaque. You know? It it may have been strawberries once upon a time, but it's now been masked by all these other things. And meanwhile, the one of the miracles of living on this planet is strawberries, and the the just vast range of materials that plants have gone to the trouble of preparing for the sake of pleasing us. And so to to hand that that responsibility or or that activity over to manufacturers who are just looking to make things as cheaply and quickly as possible, I think, is a mistake.

你喝咖啡吗？我喝。你是怎么...

Do you drink coffee? I do. How do

准备咖啡的？我每次都现磨咖啡豆？

you prepare your coffee? I grind the beans and Fresh every time?

对。这对味道很重要吗？

Yeah. Is that important to the taste?

可能是。这取决于你从哪里获取咖啡豆，以及它们的保鲜期。但我觉得确实重要。

It can be. I mean, it depends on where you get your your beans from, but and and how long they last. But I I think so.

嗯。所以你每次都现磨豆子。然后你用滴滤机、咖啡机还是法压壶？

Yeah. So you'll mill the beans each time. Yeah. And then you use a a drip filter, a machine, a French press?

滴滤咖啡。

A drip filter.

对，对。我们在斯坦福有位同事阿德勒发明了爱乐压，我用它好多年了。早在他们参与播客之前，我就记得看到他扔飞盘的样子。他是个发明家对吧？

Yeah. Yeah. We have this colleague of ours at Stanford, Adler who built the the AeroPress, which I've used for years. Long before they were involved with the podcast, I I remember seeing him throwing the Aerobie Frisbee. So he's an inventor, right?

我觉得爱乐压很有意思，因为它结合了法压壶和滴滤的特点。不过确实有数据显示咖啡可能具有显著的保健功效——但取决于冲泡方式。你现在用什么方法冲泡？当然我不是要改变你的饮食偏好。

And I think that the AeroPress is an interesting idea because it sort of combines French press and filter drip, right? It's kind of a but yeah, there are actually really interesting data that coffee has some, perhaps it seems, some powerful health promoting effects, but it depends on how you brew it. So how how are you brewing it? Not that I'm gonna get you to change the way you do anything with food or drink.

我交替使用金属滤网和纸质滤网。

So I I go back and forth between a metal filter and a and a paper filter.

嗯。

Mhmm.

我原来住在艾伦·阿德勒常玩飞盘的公园附近，还和他聊过爱乐压的设计。我非常喜欢这个创意——相比传统滴滤系统，它能更精准控制风味，因为你可以自由掌控浸泡时间。

And, yeah, I I lived near the park where Alan Adler would fly his Aerobies, and so I visited with him and chatted about the the AeroPress. And I I like the idea a lot. And it seems to me you can control the flavor with it much more than you can with a with a drip system simply because when it drips, it drips, but you can hold it into the hold it in the arrow the AeroPress as long as you want.

水温对咖啡太关键了。你会把水烧开吗？虽然可能显得吹毛求疵，但沸腾水和接近沸腾的水冲出来的咖啡风味天差地别——完全是两种饮料。

The temperature of water is so critical with coffee. Do you take it to a boil or no? I know people might think, gosh, they're really getting down to the weeds, but the flavor of coffee is completely different if you take the water to a boil versus just get it near boil or cut off the heat a moment after it starts to boil. Completely different beverage Yeah. In my opinion.

确实。我个人偏好用刚沸腾的水做滴滤。尝试过各种温度后，这是我最喜欢的。重点是明白水温确实会影响风味，选用不同温度会带来截然不同的享受。

Yeah. Yeah. And I actually prefer coffee drip coffee with water right off the boil. So I've tried all the different stages, and that's that's just my preference. It's the the important thing, though, is to know that the temperature does make a difference, and the pleasure you get from it is going to vary depending on the temperature you of the water that you use.

所以值得了解这个原理，然后多尝试找到自己最喜欢的冲泡方式。

So it's worth knowing that and then playing around and seeing what you like best.

这是体验层面的讨论。从化学角度来说，咖啡冲泡时会发生什么有趣的反应？你知道我对这些特别着迷。

So that's the experience side of it, chemically, and what's happening, I mean, when you brew coffee. Mean, what are some of the interesting coffee chemistry factoids? I'm obsessed with this stuff, as you can tell.

是的。首先，研磨颗粒的大小影响巨大，因为你本质上是在从固体中萃取可溶性物质。一杯典型的咖啡，你大概只萃取了咖啡原重量的20%。虽然比例不高，但这些都是精华。实际上，萃取时间越长，萃取的量越多，能提取出的分子也越大。

Yes. Well, so first of all, there's the the grind size makes a huge difference because what you're essentially doing is extracting extractable materials from the solids. And a typical cup of coffee, you're extracting maybe 20% of the weight of the the original weight of the coffee. So it's not that much, except that it's all the good stuff. And in fact, the the longer you extract, the more you extract, the larger the molecules you're able to remove.

而这些较大的分子往往含有单宁酸，具有收敛性，而且非常苦涩。

And those larger molecules are the ones that tend to be tannic and astringent and Really? Bitter.

没错。咖啡豆或咖啡粉接触热水的时间越长，萃取出的大分子就越多。正是这些大分子带来了那种冲喉的刺激感。对，就是这样。

Yes. The longer you let the beans or the the ground beans be exposed to the hot water, the more large molecules you pull off. The large molecules are the ones that give it that kind of punch you back in the mouth. Yeah. Yeah.

能感受到单宁的涩感。嗯。有意思。明白了。苦的。

Feeling the tannic. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Bitter.

其实这可以做个有趣的实验。如果你热爱咖啡并对这类知识感兴趣，可以这样做：在滤杯里放入咖啡粉，摆好四五个杯子，然后注水，每隔三十秒左右把滤杯移到下一个杯子。这样你就能观察到早期、中期和后期萃取的差异。后期萃取物正是这些大分子。而‘后期’这个概念，你也可以理解为用更高水温冲泡的效果——温度越高，相当于萃取时间越长。

In fact, it's kind of a fun experiment. If you if you love coffee and you're interested in this kind of thing, what you can do is make a a set up a filter with coffee in it and line up four or five different cups, and then pour the water in, and then every thirty seconds or so, move it from cup to cup. And you can see what comes out early and middle and late. And what comes out late are these larger molecules. And late is kind of, synonymous, or or you can think of using hotter water as the temperature equivalent of brewing later and later.

这样能萃取出更多物质。我想到一个词——‘陈咖啡’，就是长时间留在咖啡壶里的那种。嗯。你描述的这些大分子带来的风味，是不是就是那种味道？

You're you're getting more stuff out. The word that comes to mind is stale coffee that's been on the coffee pot a long time. Uh-huh. Is that that seems to be the flavor you're describing when you you pull these large molecules out. Is that right?

其实我想说，那种——现在不太常见了——以前在会议场合喝到的老式咖啡。或者那种...

Well, actually, I would say that so so, yeah, the the old unfortunately, not so common anymore. The old coffee that you would have at conferences and things like that. Or the one where

需要按压泵的。对。有些人会懂我们

you pump the yeah. Yeah. Some people will know

在说什么。是的。咖啡可能已经放了几个小时。在我看来那才是真正的陈咖啡，那种味道源于小分子芳香物质和大分子物质的共同变化。

what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And the coffee has been in there for a couple hours probably. That to me is stale coffee, and that's that's changes in in the smaller aromatic molecules as well as the the larger ones.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但我认为关键启示在于，这些细微差别确实影响重大。如果你对咖啡品质极其讲究，那么通过一些实验来了解你日常冲泡咖啡时可能忽略的变量边界，绝对是值得的。

But I think the the take home lesson is that these little details make a difference. And if you're a stickler for coffee just the way you want it, then doing some of these experiments to see, you know, what's what's on either side of the coffee that you brew usually is worth knowing about.

要知道，我认为所有人都应该放慢饮食体验的节奏——无论是出于你提到的提升味觉享受，还是其他原因。就拿饮品来说，我每天摄入大量咖啡因，耐受性极强。奇怪的是早晨我完全喝不下咖啡，但下午却爱不释口，清晨的咖啡对我而言简直难以下咽。

You know, I think everyone could afford to slow down their experience of consuming food for a variety of reasons, some of which you're mentioning, just straight up better taste and taste experience. And also with beverages, I consume an ungodly amount of caffeine each day. I'm very caffeine tolerant. I actually can't drink coffee in the morning, but in the afternoon, I absolutely love it. It tastes it tastes aversive to me early in the day.

不知为何。我上午习惯喝马黛茶，到了下午才享用咖啡——同样的咖啡在午后竟变得异常美味，这现象实在难以解释。

I don't know why. Drink yerba mate early in the day and throughout the morning, and then in the afternoon, I like a cup of coffee, and the same cup of coffee tastes absolutely delightful in the afternoon. I don't know what it is.

确实，这种现象很神秘

Yeah. That's that's mysterious to

我也深有同感。而且肯定与妊娠无关（众所周知孕妇会对特定时段的味道产生恶心反应）。关于咖啡和茶，我们还能做哪些优化？比如单宁味过重的茶饮简直灾难——

me too. Can't claim pregnancy either. So you know, because that people who are pregnant report feeling kind of nauseous to certain tastes at one time of day versus another. Is there anything else we can do with our coffee and tea? You know, so the tannic flavor, or the the experience of a tea being too tannic is awful.

那种金属感令人不适。但冲泡得当的茶就非常顺滑。茶叶中的单宁顺滑度究竟指什么？是分子大小差异导致的吗？

It's metallic. But when tea's done right, it's very smooth. What is this tannic smooth thing in the context of tea? Is it the same thing? Large molecules, small molecules?

本质上原理相同。这也取决于茶叶的残留物质——不同茶类天生单宁含量就不同，因为干燥工艺存在差异。我家后院种了三四株茶树，每年都会自制茶叶。

Yeah. It's basically the same thing. It it also depends on, you know, what's left in the tea leaf. So some teas are, just by definition, gonna be more tannic than others because they have been treated differently in order to make the dried tea. I have three or four tea bushes in my backyard, and so I make tea every year.

新芽萌发时正是制茶的最佳原料

Whenever the new growth comes out, that's what you make tea with is

你都制作什么类型的茶？

What kind of tea do you make?

这正是养茶树的乐趣所在！我尝试各种制法：直接鲜叶冲泡、日光萎凋后冲泡，或是模拟乌龙茶的中度加工工艺，乃至深度发酵的红茶制法——整个光谱区间都能玩转，其乐无穷。

That's the fun thing about having the bushes. I make all kinds, and I play around with them and, you know, see what happens if I just, you know, pluck a leaf and brew that or pluck a leaf, let it wither in the sun and then brew that or do the various processing techniques that give you oolong, which is kind of medium manipulated, and then black tea is very heavily manipulated. But it's a whole spectrum, and it's a lot of fun to play with.

你是直接把它们放进热水里吗？用那种金属茶滤网之类的？

And you're just putting these directly into hot water? You put it in a, like, a metal tea strainer?

大部分茶叶需要先晾干。嗯。但泡茶时，确实就是直接把茶叶放进茶壶然后倒出茶汤。我用小茶壶，这样可以尝试很多不同的茶叶。

For most of them, what you have to do first is dry them. Mhmm. But then when I make tea, yeah, it's just leaves into a pot and then pouring the tea out. I I make small pots so so that I can try lots of different things.

你是怎么晾干它们的？

How do you dry them?

这又是另一个变量了。你可以让它们自然风干。也可以——

That's another variable. So you can let them air dry. You can

就摊在台面上？

Just out on the counter?

对。我在旧金山，天气不太暖和。所以台面晾干要花些时间。不过我还会用烤面包机来烘干。

Yeah. Yeah. It takes takes I live in San Francisco, so it's not very warm. So it takes a while for them to dry on the counter. But you can also I put them in the toaster oven.

很多中国绿茶甚至是用炒锅来烘干的。

I'll dry them. A lot of Chinese green teas even are dried in a in a wok.

嗯。我会试试这个方法。用炒锅加热它们。对。对。

Mhmm. So I will do that. You heat them up in the wok. Yeah. Yeah.

烤面包机。对了，我从小就痴迷马黛茶。一直喝马黛茶，大家都知道我超——级——爱它。

Toaster oven. Yeah. Somebody who's obsessed with yerba mate since I was a kid. I've been drinking yerba mate. I love love love it as you as people know.

这个真有意思。那一株这样的植物要占多大空间？

Fascinated by this. So how much space does one of these plants take up?

嗯，这完全取决于情况。我最初买的那株只有四分之一米高。严格来说不算幼苗，因为它们是灌木，所以木质化得相当快。它们更像是...

Well, so it it totally depends. The I bought mine originally as quarter meter tall. Not exactly seedling because they are bushes, and so they they get lignified pretty quickly. They're they're more

什么是木质化？抱歉打断一下。

What's lignified? Sorry.

就像树木那样。对，就是形成坚实的基部。

Like a tree. So, yeah, a solid base.

哦，类似配体。好的，明白了。

Oh, like ligand. Okay, yeah, yeah.

对，木质化。如今生活在这个时代的好处之一就是，以前很难弄到这些植物，现在非常容易。你可以上网，找到许多不同成熟度的货源。但用茶树制茶的关键在于，你要采摘的是新生的嫩芽。

Lignified, yeah. So, and one of the cool things about being alive these days is that it used to be really hard to get your hands on these plants, but now it's very easy. You can go go online. You can find many, many different sources at many different maturities. But the the thing about making tea from tea plants is that what you're doing is plucking off the new growth.

那才是制茶的原料。不是老叶子，而是最新鲜的嫩芽，它们代谢最活跃，含有最有趣的成分——对我们这些摆弄它们的人来说很有趣。所以其实你不该用小植株制茶，要让它们长大些。

That's what you make tea from. It's not the older leaves. It's the the very newest ones, which are the most metabolically active and have the most interesting stuff in them, interesting for us when we play with them. So, you actually don't want to make tea from small plants. You wanna let them grow bigger.

之后你可以控制它们的大小。为了风味，茶树常被遮荫栽培，其实遮荫环境完全没问题。不一定非要放在阳光充足的窗台，虽然阳光下长得更快。但遮荫茶实际上更受欢迎。它们是山茶属植物，所以你知道的，并不难伺候。

And you can control the the size from from then on up. They're they're often grown in the shade, for flavor purposes, and so growing them in the shade is actually fine. You don't have to have a sunny spot on your windowsill, although it'll grow faster in the sun. But but shade grown tea is is actually preferred. And then they're they're a species of Camellia, So they're, you know, not that demanding.

需要酸性土壤，除此之外非常容易种植。我那株已经养了近二十年，采茶其实是控制它们生长的好方法。不然它们会占领整个院子。

They they need acidic soil, but apart from that, very easy to grow. I've had mine now for almost twenty years, and making tea from is actually a great way to keep them in check. You know? Otherwise, they would take over the yard.

太神奇了。那所谓的茶叶占卜呢？你也玩这个吗？就是解读茶叶那种？开个玩笑啦。

Amazing. And then what's is it called tessiography? Do you do that too? The reading of tea leaves? I'm just joking.

茶叶占卜恐怕永远不会出现在这档播客里，我这么说可能会得罪一些人。我不太相信茶叶能预示什么。是啊，确实。

Tea leaf reading is probably never going to make it onto this podcast, and I'll probably upset some people by saying that. I'm not convinced that reading tea leaves is indicative of much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

好的。很高兴我们在这点上达成一致。既然我们在探讨厨房里长期流传的说法是否反映了某些真实的化学原理，就像鲜味或法国人最后吃沙拉的习惯那样。有种观点认为饭后不应该喝茶，这是真的吗？

Okay. I'm glad we're in agreement about that. As long as we're, you know, exploring whether long standing lore within kitchens is reflective of some real chemistry, as was the case with umami or the the French with eating salads last. There's this idea that you shouldn't have tea at the end of a meal. Is that true?

还是说茶会以某种方式让胃里的食物变硬？或者这完全是胡说八道？

Or is it is it like that it somehow hardens the food in your stomach? Or is this just complete, like, this complete nonsense?

听起来更像是完全的无稽之谈。

Sounds to me in the direction of complete nonsense.

太好了。因为我喜欢饭后喝茶，尤其是饭后喝洋甘菊茶。

Great. Because I like tea at the end of a meal. I like chamomile tea after a meal.

尤其是花草茶，因为...我完全可以编个故事说茶里的酚类化合物会在胃里形成交联之类——毕竟多酚确实有这个特性——但我不认为这会造成实际影响。

Well and herbal teas especially because, I mean, I could I could make a a just so story about the the phenolic compounds in tea cross linking things in your stomach or something like that because polyphenols do that, but I can't imagine that it makes a difference.

所以多酚会使蛋白质交联？对。对。给不了解的听众解释下：蛋白质交联是改变其构象的方式，通常会使其更坚硬。在实验室里，当我们使用福尔马林或多聚甲醛等固定剂时，就是把非常柔软的组织（通常是脑切片）变得不那么软，以便操作。

So polyphenols cross link proteins? Yeah. Yeah. For those who aren't familiar, cross linking proteins is a way of changing their configuration and making generally makes them more rigid when we in laboratories, when we use fixative like formaldehyde or para formaldehyde, you're taking a tissue, usually a slice of brain tissue, which is very floppy, and you need to be less floppy so you can work with it. And so you put it into para formaldehyde or formaldehyde or glutaraldehyde.

这些固定剂会形成所谓的席夫碱。我说得对吗？嗯。看来我的化学知识还没忘光？

All these things create what are called Schiff bases. Do I have that right? Yeah. Okay. Remembering my chemistry?

它们让蛋白质交联后，你就能把那东西拿起来...虽然是很薄的切片啦。我可不想让胃里的食物变成这样。不过现在大家都说多酚是超级好东西。

And they cross link the proteins, so that then you can pick that thing up like a Uh-huh. Well, it's a very thin slab. I would not want to do that to the food in my gut. Right. But nowadays, we hear that polyphenols are, like, the greatest thing.

那多酚到底该怎么看待？我们应该避免和蛋白质同时摄入吗？

So what's the deal with polyphenols? Should we consume them separately from proteins?

不，没必要。因为多酚会交联正是由于它们的活性特性。这意味着它们几乎遇到任何物质都会结合。你吃下去后，它们最终还是会到达消化道下部。

Yeah. No. I I don't think so, because the the thing about polyphenols, the reason that they do this cross linking is the fact that they're reactive. And what that means is you you put them in with almost anything else, and they're gonna get bound. And then you're gonna swallow them, and they're gonna, you know, make it down to your lower GI tract.

然后在那里，它们可能会被释放，因为无论它们与什么结合的物质都会被消化等等。但在那里，这并不一定是坏事。事实上，这可能是一件好事。不过，关于多酚在早期过程中的作用，如果你想想会发生什么，比如，如果你把牛奶和一些葡萄酒混合并放置，它会凝结。这是因为多酚正在交联牛奶蛋白质。

And then there, they may be, you know, freed up because the whatever they're bound to gets to be digested and so on. But there, it's not a bad thing necessarily. In fact, it's it's probably a good thing. So but the the thing about polyphenols early on in the process, if you think about what would happen if, for example, you take milk and add some wine to it and let it sit, it'll curdle. And that's because the polyphenols are cross linking the the milk proteins.

所以这基本上就是我们体内正在发生的事情。

And so that's basically the kind of thing that's happening inside us.

多年前，有一种半流行的饮食法，那是在九十年代初，认为你不应该同时摄入碳水化合物和蛋白质，而应该分开吃。我还听说，你应该在饭前或远离正餐时吃水果，而不是饭后，因为这可能会导致消化问题。我相信人们在能吃什么方面差异很大。我实际上就是其中之一。如果我胃痛，那意味着出了严重的问题。

Years ago, there was a semi popular diet, this was in the early nineties, that argued that you shouldn't combine carbohydrates and proteins, that you should actually eat them separately. And I've also heard it said that you want to eat fruit before a meal or away from a meal, but not after a meal because it can give you digestive issues. I'm sure people differ tremendously in terms of what they can consume. I I'm actually one of these people. I, if I have a stomachache, it means something is seriously wrong.

是的。我是说，除了金属屑，我什么都能吃，而且我的胃不会痛。我不会头痛或胃痛。我会遇到其他问题，但不会遇到这些。有些人对食物组合非常敏感。

Yeah. I mean, I can eat everything except metal shavings, and my stomach doesn't hurt. I don't get headaches or stomachaches. I get other things, but I don't get those. Some people are very sensitive to food combinations.

他们很容易胃痛。所以，无论一个人对不同的食物有多敏感，如果有消化问题，是否有某些食物应该分开吃？你知道的，或者，比如腹胀或胃咕咕叫，这种情况，或者更糟的情况？

They get stomachaches really easily. So regardless of one's sensitivity to different foods, are there certain foods that it would make sense to keep them separate if you have digestive issues? You know, or, you know, bloating or just, like, gurgling stomach, this kind of thing, or worse?

是的。我的理解是，首先，我知道事实上，在过去的一百五十年里，我们已经循环经历了所有这些理论的所有可能排列组合，但没有一个现在被吹捧为答案。所以对我来说，这意味着这类问题没有统一的答案，它真的取决于个人的生理状况以及人们由于自身特定原因能耐受什么。我不认为有任何原则可以让你选择是否组合食物，从而对你的健康产生影响。而且，你知道，我们每天吃这么多不同的东西，我认为很难梳理出任何特定的关系。

Yeah. So my understanding is well, first of all, I know for a fact that we have cycled through every possible permutation of these theories over the course of the last hundred and fifty years with no one of them actually being touted now as the the answer. So to me, what that says is there is no the answer for this kind of question and that it really does depend on individual physiology and what what people can tolerate for their own particular reasons. I don't think there are any principles by which you can choose to combine or not combine foods that would make a difference to your health. Also, it's you know, we're we're eating so many different things so many times a day that it I think would be really hard to kind of tease out any particular relationships like this.

即使它们确实存在，它们可能也只存在于某些亚群体中，而不是全世界范围内。

And even if they do exist, they probably exist only for subpopulations and not for the world at large.

所以，翻译过来，我听到的是你必须找出适合你的方法。听起来你并不相信任何一种特定的营养计划或饮食法是根据任何特定的科学制定的。但听起来你倾向于认为某些饮食，由于缺乏更好的词，对不同的人会更有效。

So translated, what I'm hearing is you have to figure out what works for you. Doesn't sound like you believe in one particular nutrition plan or diet according to any particular science. But it does sound like you leaning toward the idea that certain diets, for lack of a better word, will work better for different people.

是的。我想我肯定会说这取决于个人，而且我不确定我是否会一开始就接受最优饮食的概念，因为除非最优包括极其多样化，这在某种程度上与最优相反。你知道的？这是确保不断尝试很多不同的东西，而不是坚持一种特定的方法。所以，是的，我认为我们只是知道得不够多，无法给出任何明确的结论。

Yeah. I guess I would I would certainly say that it would depend on the the individual, and I'm I'm not sure that I would buy in necessarily to the idea of an optimal diet in the first place because unless optimal included tremendously varied, which is kind of, you know, in a way, the opposite of optimal. You know? It's it's making sure to try a lot of different things all the time rather than hewing to one particular approach. So, yeah, I I think we just don't know enough to to say anything definitive.

我们谈论那些一直有问题的洋葱和大蒜。洋葱和大蒜有很多化学特性，最著名的是洋葱引起的流泪。洋葱引起流泪的基础是什么，我们如何缓解它？

We talk about the ever problematic onions and garlic. There's a lot of chemistry around onions and garlic, most notably the crying caused by onions. What is the basis of the crying caused by onions, and how do we mitigate it?

所以葱科植物家族中的洋葱和大蒜是近亲。它们通过含硫分子进行自我防御——这些分子在完整根部时处于惰性状态，一旦组织受损，酶就会将其转化为具有挥发性的化学防御物质。

So plants in that family, the allium family, so onions and garlic, are close relatives. They the way that they defend themselves from animals that might want to eat them, and they're not fruits. They're actually roots or, root like structures that are meant to give rise to the next generation. So to the plant, they're very important. They're defended with these sulfur molecules that in the intact root are inactive.

当细胞结构被破坏时，酶会立即将这些前体物质转化为化学武器。这些挥发性分子能直接通过空气传播，甚至不需要直接接触洋葱就会刺激我们的感官。

But then the moment the tissues are disrupted, enzymes get to work and generate from those precursors kind of chemical warfare cylinders. The the cylinders are opened, and we end up with these molecules that can fly through the air. They're volatile. We don't have to actually touch the the onion. They they come to us, these molecules.

这种防御机制正是为了制造不适感。应对方法包括：佩戴护目镜阻断分子接触眼睛，或边切边冲洗——因为切割产生的活性分子主要集中在切口表面，及时冲洗能有效减少刺激。

And they're meant to do exactly what they do, which is make us miserable. So the fact that they're volatile means that you can protect yourself by doing a couple of different things. You can wear goggles, which present prevents volatile molecules from getting to your eyes. You can do the the cutting interspersed with just a rinse in water because that'll the the molecules are being generated at the surface that you're generating by doing the cutting. So if occasionally you just rinse those surfaces, then the volatiles go away, and they don't bother you as much.

也可以选择甜洋葱品种（如著名的毛伊洋葱），它们几乎不产生含硫刺激物，完全不会引发眼部不适反应。

You can also get nonpungent varieties of onions, which which exist. Maui onions are the the best known of those, and they just don't make those sulfur molecules so that they don't they don't irritate us.

这让我想起斯坦福疼痛科主任肖恩·麦基医生的经历：尽管受过传统医学训练，他曾认为许多肠胃问题是心因性的——直到自己遭遇严重腹痛。通过饮食日志排查，最终发现洋葱中的组胺正是引发其剧烈胃肠反应的元凶。

I'm reminded that our colleague at Stanford, Doctor. Sean Mackie, who runs the pain division, when he was on this podcast, he said that despite many years of traditional training in medicine, and thinking that a lot of people's reported gut issues were perhaps psychosomatic and all this stuff. Himself had the experience of, I think a lot of gut pain at one point in his life, just and not knowing what the origin was. And it seemed like it was after certain meals and not others. And he did all the necessary self experimentation to pinpoint that it was onions that were causing this very What sounded like pretty severe gastric issues and pain.

正是这些引发炎症的组胺分子改变了他的认知——食物不耐受是真实存在的。如今传统医学界也开始正视：当患者描述特定食物引发不适时，他们并非臆想。

And it was the histamines caused by ingesting onions. Right? These little packets of molecules that cause inflammation. And so that in part converted him to this idea that when people talk about their negative experiences with certain foods, that they're not making this stuff up, that it's very likely that they have some sort of food sensitivity. And I think now the landscape of quote unquote traditional medicine is starting to become more open to this.

你描述的洋葱防御机制很有趣：这些本为威慑动物设计的化学武器，被人类食用后竟真的会导致部分人出现不良反应。连顶尖疼痛专家都确认洋葱组胺会加剧肠道问题——这种食物化学、个体差异与医学认知的交汇点确实发人深省。

But in hearing what you just described, like these warfare molecules coming out of onions, stimulating a negative re they're designed to create an aversive reaction in animals that would eat them. Here we are eating these things, and then the idea that it would be bad for certain people, at first seemed like shocking to the standard medical community, but now one of the leading experts in the world of pain medicine is like, Hey, listen, histamines from onions are a problem for people with gut issues. Sometimes, not always. So, I think there's an interesting kind of intersection of food chemistry individual experience, and where medicine is headed. It's not crazy.

毕竟这些都是食物中的活性化学成分，产生不同反应完全合理。

These are chemicals coming out of food. Yeah. Makes sense.

没错。最典型的例子就是辣椒素——辣椒的辛辣感正是这种专为威慑哺乳动物设计的分子所致（有趣的是鸟类对其无感），以确保种子能在被咀嚼前通过鸟类传播。

Yeah. Exactly. And maybe the the most prominent example of an aversive chemical being generated in foods that we love is capsaicin in peppers. So hot peppers, the ones that are spicy are spicy because they contain a particular molecule that is designed to be aversive to animals so that animals won't chew up those fruits before the seeds can be dispersed. And interestingly, the the animals that the plant depends on for dispersal are birds, and birds don't respond to capsaicin.

鸟类确实对辣椒素无反应吗？确实如此。这种分子专门针对我们这类哺乳动物，但有些人却能承受惊人的辣度。

They don't have the Really? Yeah. Yeah. So this is a a molecule that that's designed specifically for mammals like us to get us to leave those those fruits alone. And some people can handle tremendously noxious, shall we say, levels of capsaicin.

嗯。而其他人则非常、非常敏感，几乎无法承受任何辛辣。所以，是的，这都是世界赋予我们这些食材以滋养自身的宏大图景的一部分，我们正在与这些食材协商，以便能享受它们并从中获得营养。

Mhmm. And other people are very, very sensitive and and can't can't handle hardly any. So, yeah, it's all part of this this larger picture of the world giving us these materials to feed ourselves and are working out our negotiations with those materials so that we can enjoy them and be nourished by them.

我想稍后再深入探讨辣味，但有没有数据显示人们在辣椒素受体（我想是P物质受体或类似物）密度、甜味受体或鲜味受体方面存在遗传差异？这些差异或许不能预测，但可以部分解释为何有人极度抗拒辣味，有人却追求辛辣，以及为何某些食物对某些人来说就是难以下咽，甚至引发肠胃不适等问题。

I wanna explore spiciness a bit more in a moment, but are there any data that there are genetic differences among people in terms of the density of, I think the capsaicin receptor is a substance P receptor or something like that, or sweet receptors or umami receptors that would perhaps not predict, but partially explain why some people are really averse to spice, other people pursue spice, and why some foods perhaps just like don't taste good to certain people or even give them gut issues or this sort of thing.

这方面研究最透彻的是味觉而非嗅觉。嗅觉研究很困难，因为受体种类繁多且气味成千上万，但味觉是个相对受限的领域。存在所谓的'超级味觉者'，这最终肯定与遗传有关。不过最初定义这类人群的方法很简单——统计舌头上味蕾的数量。研究人员划定特定区域，染色味蕾后直接在数千人中进行计数。

So the the best studied aspect of this is taste rather than smell. Smell is difficult because there are so many different receptors and thousands and thousands of smells, but taste is a relatively confined subject. And there are what are called supertasters, and this has to do eventually, I'm sure, with genetics. But the way this category of people was first defined was by simply counting taste buds on the tongue. So they they had a particular area in which they could look, and they stained the the taste buds and then simply counted them, enumerated them on, thousands of different people.

他们发现，正如你所料，某些人在给定区域味蕾极少，而另一些人的味蕾则密集到几乎无法计数。哇。

And what they found was, as you might expect, there are some people with very, very few in a given area, and others where they're so crowded together, you can barely count them. Wow.

就像高像素密度和低像素密度。对，有人是iPhone初代水平，有人则是现在iPhone 16或13的密度水平。哇。

So high pixel density, low pixel density. Yeah. Some people have the iPhone one. Some people have the iPhone whatever we're on now of 16 or something or 13 density. Wow.

没错。显然这会直接影响你口腔的味觉体验。研究者将受体密度最高的人群称为'超级味觉者'——这个命名其实不太妥当，因为这个词带有本不相关的暗示。

Yeah. Yeah. So clearly, that's going to affect the way you experience whatever you put in your mouth. And the investigators gave the name Supertaster to the people who had the highest density of of receptors. It's unfortunate because, you know, the the term does have connotations that that are that really don't belong.

只是有些人味蕾多，有些人少而已。

It's just some people have lots of taste receptors, and other people don't have very many.

那么问题在于，味蕾密度高的人是否具有更敏锐的味觉分辨力？比如在甜度维度上，他们能否区分两种食物或饮料，而受体密度低的人则无法？所以...

Well, I guess the question is, do the people who have higher density of taste receptors have better taste discrimination? Can they tell two foods apart or beverages apart on a dimension of, say, sweetness that somebody with lower density receptors can't? So that's

这是个非常好的问题，我虽不确定确切答案，但可以确定的是：'超级味觉者'听起来很棒——谁不想尝得更丰富？但实际上他们对苦味和酸味异常敏感，以至于普通人觉得可口的食物，他们会因感官过载而厌恶。我曾在纽约已停业的法国烹饪学院授课，学员中有厨师也有普通人。我们会用苦味物质（滴在滤纸上）进行味觉测试作为味蕾数量的替代指标。

a a really good question, and my I I I don't know exactly the answer to that, but what I do know is that you would think that supertaster sounds great. That's what I want is to be able to taste more. In fact, supertasters are especially sensitive to bitterness and to acidity to the point that foods that other people enjoy just fine, they find aversive simply because the the sensation is overwhelming. So I used to teach a course at the French Culinary Institute, no longer with us in New York, and we would often have chefs in the course along with just ordinary people. The and we would do a taste test to a a proxy for counting the number of taste buds.

但如果你是食品行业的专业人士，你需要清楚自己的短板并知道如何弥补，如果

But if you're a professional in the food world, you need to know what you are and how to compensate for it if

有需要的话。我想稍作休息，感谢我们的赞助商Function。去年，在寻找最全面的实验室检测方案时，我成为了Function会员。Function提供100多项高级实验室检测，能全面反映你的身体健康状况。这些检测结果能让你了解心脏健康、激素水平、免疫功能、营养状况等多方面信息。

you if you need to. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.

他们最近还新增了毒素检测项目，比如检测有害塑料中的双酚A暴露，以及PFAS等永久性化学物质。Function不仅能检测100多种与身心健康相关的关键生物标志物，还会分析结果并提供相关领域顶尖医生的专业解读。比如在我第一次使用Function检测时，就发现血液中汞含量偏高。Function不仅帮我发现了这个问题，还给出了降低汞含量的最佳方案，包括减少金枪鱼摄入。当时我吃了很多金枪鱼，同时努力多吃绿叶蔬菜，并补充NAC和乙酰半胱氨酸——这两种物质都有助于谷胱甘肽生成和排毒。

They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over a 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption. I've been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification.

通过第二次Function检测，我可以肯定地说这个方法确实有效。全面的血液检测至关重要，很多关乎身心健康的指标只能通过验血发现。问题是传统血液检测一直价格昂贵且流程复杂。相比之下，Function的简便性和亲民价格让我印象深刻。

And I should say by taking a second function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost, it is very affordable.

因此我决定加入他们的科学顾问委员会，也很高兴他们能赞助本播客。如果你想尝试Function，可以访问functionhealth.com/huberman。目前Function的等候名单已超过25万人，但他们为Huberman播客听众提供了优先通道。重申一次，访问functionhealth.com/huberman即可获得优先体验资格。你会在水果上撒盐吗？

As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to function. Do you salt your fruit?

几年前流行过给水果撒盐的吃法，记得吗？我试过。我既爱吃水果也爱盐，

A few years ago, there was this, like, a trend of salting fruit. Remember that? I tried it. I love fruit. I love salt.

但对咸味水果不太感冒。不过我不想一棍子打死这种吃法，它是否真能给水果带来什么特别的风味

Wasn't such a fan of salting fruit, but I don't want to dismiss it right off the bat. Does it do anything interesting to fruit in a

值得我重新尝试？嗯，我觉得这完全因人而异。我祖母就喜欢往葡萄柚上撒盐。

way that should have me return to that? Yeah, no, I think it's a completely individual thing. My grandmother would salt her grapefruit.

哦，我们小时候会在葡萄柚上撒糖。对对。

Oh, yeah. Oh, no. We would put sugar on our grapefruit when we were kids. Yeah. Yeah.

蔗糖。好吧。所以她选择撒盐。

Sucrose. Okay. So She would salt her grapefruit.

她习惯在葡萄柚上撒盐，现在我们知道，实际上咸味和苦味是相互抵消的味觉感受，增加盐分确实能减轻苦味。所以她是在不加糖的情况下降低苦感，这对她很重要。她早上喝茶时会用当时的人工甜味剂。

She would she would salt her grapefruit, and it turns out, we know now, that in fact, salt and bitter are kind of opposing sensations, and you can actually diminish the sensation of bitterness by upping the salt. So she was making it less bitter without adding sugar, which to her was was important. She used, you know, the the the artificial sweetener of the day in her tea in the morning.

有意思。我认识一些人会在咖啡里加微量盐，据他们说可以'去掉棱角'，意思是消除苦味。这很合理。

That's interesting. I I know people who put a tiny, tiny bit of salt in their coffee to, according to them, take the edge off, meaning to take the bitterness out. It makes sense.

是啊。没错。

Yeah. Yeah.

从化学角度看，这种苦味与咸味的对抗关系。基本上神经系统的所有机制都是对抗性的。顺便说下，啤酒也是如此。

Based on the chemistry, this push pull of of of bitter and salty salty taste. Yeah. Pretty much everything in the nervous system is push pull. Yeah. And that that goes, by the way, for things like beer.

有些人会在啤酒里加一小撮盐。全世界我唯一喜欢喝啤酒的地方是慕尼黑，那里的啤酒...也可能是搭配的炸肉排太美味了。他们会用加热器把啤酒加热到室温，这完全改变了口感。那些啤酒的气泡很细腻。

Some people will add a a pinch of salt to their beer. The only place in the world where I enjoy beer is in Munich, where they serve beer well, maybe it's the schnitzel that they're it's you know, I I love that stuff. But they'll come around with a heater, and they'll heat your beer so that it's room temperature. And it completely changes the taste. The bubbles are small in those beers.

我觉得喝起来略带甜味。我问过当地人，对他们来说喝冰镇啤酒简直匪夷所思，就像告诉美国人应该在苹果派上放意大利面一样荒谬。我们聊聊酒精吧。

They taste to me just a little bit sweeter. And I asked them about this, and and the idea that you would drink a cold beer to them was like, what are you talking about? I mean, might as well tell an American that they should have their apple pie with spaghetti on top or something. It's crazy. Let's talk about alcohol.

虽然我不喝酒，但我知道人们喜欢少量葡萄酒、烈酒或啤酒。只要不是酗酒且已成年，适量饮用可能无妨——当然零摄入更好。说说葡萄酒和啤酒的简史吧？人类何时开始发酵水果和啤酒花？为什么要制造这种有毒却令人陶醉的饮品？

Even though I'm not a drinker, I know people enjoy a little bit of wine or spirits or or beer, and I'm I'm supposed as long as people aren't alcoholics and they're of age, like, you know, small amounts of consumption are are are probably okay. Zero is better. But so let's talk about wine and beer. What's the the brief history on on this? When do people start fermenting fruit and hops and and and this whole business of creating poison to ingest because it tastes good and gets them a little bit inebriated.

这到底是怎么回事？

What what is this?

这个领域每年都有新发现，考古遗址不断将时间线前移。现代技术能检测陶器残留物，非常惊人。有观点认为，早在智人出现前我们就开始享用酒精了。真的吗？是的。

So this is actually an an area where we're learning more every year because people are especially archaeological sites are pushing dates back and so on and finding evidence for this kind of thing. The the the ability to detect residues in pots is is just amazing these days. But my guess is, and it's been argued that, we have been enjoying alcohol since before we were Homo sapiens. Really? Yes.

观察显示灵长类动物会主动寻找发酵果实食用。我打赌（虽然没追踪相关文献）肯定有行为学研究证实食用这些果实会影响它们的协调能力。人类在进化成智人前就开始享受酒精了。考古记录显示，酒精酿造可追溯到农业起源时期，且遍布多个文明发源地。

That primates, in fact, when you observe them, will go after fermenting fruit and enjoy it, and, you seek out and pick those fruits and not not others. And I bet I it's not a literature I keep up with, but I bet that there are some behavioral studies as well to to suggest whether or not the ingestion of the fruit is actually having an effect on their coordination, for example. I I bet there are studies like that. So we've been enjoying alcohol before we were Homo sapiens. And in the archaeological record, the dates have been pushed back now to the the very beginnings of agriculture and in many different places.

所以中国、中东，这只是一个诱人的可能性，很可能最初只是源于收集一堆水果，没有立刻吃掉，然后它们开始散发出有趣的气味。你尝试了一下，然后它

So China, The Middle East, it's just an attractive possibility, which probably did simply start with, you know, collecting a bunch of fruit, not getting around to eating it right away, and, you know, it beginning to smell interesting. And you try it, and it

产生了效果。人类互相怂恿尝试新事物。

does things. Humans daring other humans to try things.

顺便说一句，我认为巧克力的发现或其潜力也是如此。可可豆是水果中的种子。目前的观点是，人们最初采集果实是为了果肉，而大颗的种子被随意堆在火堆旁。种子表面残留的果肉足够发酵，这是制作巧克力的第一步。

Which I think is also, by the way, how chocolate was discovered or the the possibilities for chocolate. So cacao beans are the seeds in a fruit. And the current thinking is that the fruits were gathered for the fruit, and the seeds, which are large, were simply thrown in a pile near the near the fire. And there there were enough residues of the fruit on the seeds for those residues to ferment, and that's the first step in making chocolate.

嗯。关于酒精，正如你提到的，它有着悠久历史。我听说尽管人们对不同葡萄酒投入巨大热情和金钱——取决于品牌、标签、年份（尤其是当年葡萄品质受天气土壤影响）——这形成庞大产业。但偶尔会有研究显示，在盲品测试中，连最资深的葡萄酒专家也无法区分顶级佳酿与廉价酒。

Mhmm. So with respect to alcohol, I mean, alcohol is, as you mentioned, a long history. I've heard it said that despite so much fascination and money spent on different wines, depending on the make and the label and the year in particular, and how the grapes were that year, depending on how the weather was that year and the soil, and so much goes into this. It's a huge industry. But every once in a while, there'll be a study published where they'll do a blind taste test, and some of the most experienced, aka expert wine drinkers won't be able to discern the finest wine or near finest wine from a far more trivial, inexpensive wine.

这总会引发几周骚动，之后人们又恢复根据收入和对品质的认知来消费葡萄酒。这像是人类心理学的疯狂探索——如果专家真分不清20美元和2000美元的酒，却仍坚持购买更贵的酒（只要负担得起），这揭示了人类赋予事物价值的复杂方式。

And that always seems to send everyone into disarray for a couple of weeks. And then everyone goes right back to distributing their wine consumption according to their income and what they perceive to be the better wine. It's kind of a wild foray into human psychology. Like, if this is true, that these expert wine drinkers can't discern, like, a $20 bottle of wine from a $2,000 bottle of wine, and yet they insist on returning to the the practice of preferentially buying and consuming more expensive wines if they have the means. I mean, that says all sorts of things about humans and the way we place value on things.

但我想知道，从口感角度，更贵的酒真的更好吗？通过新手和专家品酒者的视角，真相是什么？

But I want to know, are the more expensive wines actually truly better from the perspective of taste? And through the lens of, let's just say, a novice and an expert wine drinker, what's the deal?

是的，这个问题在各方面都非常复杂。首先确实存在这样的实验：将昂贵红酒与染红的白酒混在一起让专家品评，结果专家被食用色素欺骗。所以很大程度上，这关乎我们品尝时的预期。

Yeah. Yeah. So this, I think, is really complicated in all kinds of interesting ways. And I think to begin with, it's true that people have done things like serve red wines, expensive red wines alongside white wines that had been dyed red and asked people asked asked experts to to judge them and comment on them and the experts being fooled by the by the food coloring. So I think it's it's in large part, to begin with, a a matter of what we're expecting to happen when we taste something.

预期会影响感知。神经生物学家戈登·谢泼德写过几本相关著作。这是个复杂循环：我们先有预期，品尝时预期会塑造体验认知——这不是否定葡萄酒，只是人类感官存在局限。

And if we have expectations, then those expectations are going to influence our perception. And there are a couple of wonderful books by a neurobiologist named Gordon Shepherd Mhmm. On exactly these subjects. So it's a complicated loop. We we have expectations.

至于葡萄酒本身因酿酒师、产地、天气、工艺等产生的差异：通过训练，你可以察觉细微差别，就像在其他领域（如艺术鉴赏）培养敏锐度一样。这些知识都会影响判断。当我们比较葡萄酒优劣时，本质是在做主观评判——你对某事物了解越多，就越能精准欣赏或批评它。

We taste something. The expectations play into what we think we experience and our conclusions from that experience, which is no knock on the wines. It's just the the fact of our imperfect nature as sensory beings. Then when it comes to the wines themselves and the kind of variation that you find from from different kinds of winemakers, locations, weather, treatment during the winemaking process, all all those different things. If you work at it, you can train yourself to notice minute differences just as you can train yourself to notice minute differences in all kinds of other things that that we care about.

嗯。

Art connoisseurship, for example, you know, is knowing something about the history of art and and about the materials and that kind of thing. They all play into our judgment. And what we're talking about when we're talking about the whether a wine is better than another, it's a judgment. And I think the more you know about if if you care to know, the more you know about a particular material, the better you're able to either appreciate it or depreciate it depending. Mhmm.

葡萄酒本身就是一种令人着迷的物质。我的意思是，它每年由世界各地不同品种的葡萄、不同地区的人们酿造而成，因这些不同因素而风味各异。如果你对这类差异感兴趣，并且能从啜饮一口后感叹‘啊，这款酒产自温暖年份的葡萄园，比我酒窖里另一瓶更成熟’中获得愉悦，那就太棒了。这说明你正在充分发挥人类的感知能力。

And wine is just fascinating material. I mean, it's it's it's made every year from all kinds of different grapes in all kinds of different parts of the world by all kinds of different people, and they all taste kinda different depending on all those different factors. And if you're interested in those kinds of distinctions and if you get pleasure from taking a sip and saying, ah, yeah. That was a warm year in that in that vineyard and tastes a little riper than the other bottle that I have in my cellar, that's that's great. That means you're, you know, using your human capacities to the utmost.

如果只是为了喝酒而喝，乐趣就少得多。所以我认为这不仅取决于产品本身，更取决于消费者。

If you're just drinking to drink, not so much. So I think it depends on the not only the the product, but the but the consumer.

嗯。就像生活中许多领域一样，好奇心似乎能让人与事物建立更深层次的联系。这档播客的一位喜剧演员嘉宾说过和你完全一致的观点——你了解得越多，比如电影制作、视觉艺术或歌曲背后的故事，就越能欣赏它。但有个例外：喜剧。

Mhmm. Like so many domains of life, it sounds like curiosity lends itself to a deeper and better relationship with something. A guest on this podcast, who himself was a comedian, said exactly what you said. He said, which is only to say that you agree, that the more you learn about something, the way a movie was made or visual art or a song, the more you come to appreciate it. With one exception, comedy.

你觉得好笑就是好笑，不好笑就是不好笑。你可以了解喜剧演员的创作过程，可以研究背景知识，但如果本身不觉得好笑，它永远不会变得好笑。这似乎是体验宇宙中的唯一例外。

You either think something's funny or not. You can learn you can learn about the process that comedian went through. You can learn about the context. And if it's not funny to you, it's not gonna become funny. So it seems to be like one exception in the universe of experiences.

虽然当时讨论的不是食物，但我认为他会完全同意你的观点——这正好引出我的下一个问题：关于奶酪。当你走进丹麦或北欧的奶酪店时，是感到欣喜还是无所适从？去过的人都知道，那种冲击力太强烈了。

But even though we weren't talking about food, I think he would totally agree with you on this point. Which is a perfect segue for my next question, which is about cheese. When you walk into a cheese shop in, say, Denmark or in Northern Europe, do you like it, or do you feel overwhelmed? Because for those who have, they know. It's intense.

其实那是我最爱的体验之一。当年我们全家在法国生活时，我决定要了解奶酪——毕竟法国盛产奶酪。我在居住小镇的农贸市场找到个流动摊位，用蹩脚法语表示想学习奶酪知识，结果被教育了十分钟‘美国人永远不懂欣赏正宗奶酪’。

Yeah. It's one of my favorite things, actually. Something that I learned to like when our family lived in France for a year, and I decided, you know, the French make a lot of cheese. I should learn something about that. And I I went to a little trailer at one of the farmer mark farmer's markets in the little village we were living in, and in my broken French said I was I would like to learn about cheese, I got, like, a ten minute lecture on how Americans could never appreciate cheese properly.

但摊主最后说‘好吧，我来教你’。接下来一年里，我每周都和这位奶酪商学习——虽然她卖的大多不是自产奶酪，但会根据时令供应当地应季产品。我学到了海量知识，并爱上了这种多样性：从两三种动物奶源的基础原料开始，最终却能创造出如此丰富的风味谱系，这简直是人类智慧的赞歌。对了，人类制作食用奶酪的历史有多久了？

But then, okay, I'll I'll tutor you. And so and I had a wonderful yearlong, just every every week, a session with this cheesemaker who was bringing she herself did not make most of the cheeses she sold, but she would sell what was proper seasonally for that for that place. Anyway, I learned a tremendous amount, fell in love with the the diversity, you know, starting with basically the same material, maybe two or three different animals, kinds of milks. But starting with the same bland material and ending up with this tremendous range of flavors is, I think, a tribute to human ingenuity to to be able to come up with that kind of, diversity. How long has cheese been, made and consumed by humans?

似乎从动物驯化初期就开始了，甚至可能在完全驯化之前。大约七八千年前的中亚地区，就已经出现乳制品了。

Since apparently very early in the domestication of animals, maybe even before animals were fully domesticated. So, again, we're talking seven thousand, eight thousand years ago. In the in the case of dairy products, that's pretty much in the in the Central Asian area.

我们能聊聊奶酪化学和发酵过程吗？当然。先问个具体奶酪的问题——虽然上网查资料总是有风险的。

Can we talk about the chemistry of cheese and fermentation? Sure. Yeah. First, a question about a specific cheese. If one looks online, which is always a dangerous thing to do.

想获取真实信息必须非常谨慎。有种说法认为某些奶酪（尤其是帕尔马干酪）富含酪氨酸，而酪氨酸作为多巴胺的前体氨基酸，能让人产生轻微愉悦感。当然也可能只是因为人们喜欢它的味道，或两者兼有。不过从某种角度说得通。

If you're in search of real information, you have to be very discerning. There's this idea that certain cheeses, in particular Parmesan cheeses, are so rich with the amino acid tyrosine that they create, because tyrosine is the amino acid precursor to dopamine, that they create a mild high of sorts. Now this, of course, could also be that people just really enjoy the taste, or both. Yeah. But makes sense at some level.

关于奶酪的化学特性和品尝体验，目前已知的有哪些？

What's known about the chemistry of cheeses and the experience of cheeses?

是的。奶酪之所以比牛奶有趣得多，关键在于微生物在其中或表面存活了数周、数月甚至数年，缓慢分解蛋白质和脂肪，生成我们之前讨论过的那些带有风味的小分子，这些分子带给我们味觉和嗅觉的体验。一般来说，这个过程持续得越久，分解产物就越多，风味也就越丰富多样。当然也有例外，比如卡芒贝尔奶酪，在制作过程中通过加速变化，能快速形成浓郁风味。

Yeah. Well, so the the thing that makes cheese much more interesting than milk is the fact that, microbes have been living in it and on it for, weeks or months or years and slowly breaking down the proteins and the fats and generating these small molecules that we were talking about before that have flavor, that that give us the sensations of taste and smell. The longer that process goes on, for the most part, the more of those breakdown products there are and the richer and more more varied the flavor is. Now you can sometimes get very strong flavored cheeses very quickly. Camembert is an example of cheese like that where you, in the cheese making process, essentially encourage the changes to happen very rapidly.

但如果放慢这个过程，让时间更长久，最终会得到更多样化的分子组合。以帕尔马干酪为例，那些在两三年陈化奶酪中形成的脆脆晶体——它们是真实陈年的标志，值得你为它支付比新鲜奶酪高出一倍的价格——通常是酪氨酸或其他氨基酸衍生物，从蛋白质链上分解出来后，随着奶酪缓慢脱水变得不溶并逐渐结晶。这些晶体既是陈化工艺的证明，也标志着陈化时长。

But if you dial back on the process and let it take longer, you end up with a much more diverse array of array of molecules. And in the case of Parmesan and the those crystals that you end up with in cheeses that are two, three years old, which are crunchy and kind of they're the the sign of authenticity, you know, that the this cheese is actually that old, and it's worth paying double the price that you would pay for a young version. Those are usually tyrosine or other amino acid derivatives that are that have been broken off of the protein chains. And then because the cheese has slowly been dehydrating, they've become insoluble and begin to crystallize out. And so that's why they're a sign of of the process of aging and also the the time of aging.

不过有意思的是，酪氨酸原本就存在于蛋白质中。现在它以结晶形态析出，是否意味着能更直接地影响我们的感官？我们不再需要消化蛋白质，一入口就能立即感受到它。或许这与人们描述的特殊体验有关。

The thing about it, though and the the for me, the question mark is that tyrosine was there already in the proteins. And so is having it crystallize out somehow making it more immediately available to have an effect on us? You know, we don't have to digest the protein anymore now. It just, you know, pops right into us the moment we put it in our mouths. Maybe that has something to do with the effect that people are reporting.

当奶酪添加烟熏风味时，如果是正宗的，是否真的经过烟熏处理？

When smoke flavors are added to cheese, is it through actual smoking process Yes. If it's authentic?

没错。如果是传统工艺，奶酪确实会放在阴燃熏料的房间里——这种做法自古就有，至今仍在沿用，类似于熏制火腿。毕竟虫豸也钟爱营养丰富的食材，而烟熏正是驱虫的好方法。

Yeah. If it's authentic, yeah, the cheeses have been kept in a room with something smoldering, and that was often in the old old days and still to some extent these days, kinda like curing hams. Bugs are gonna wanna enjoy that really rich nutritious material, and so you have to ward them off, and smoke is a good way to do it.

啊，这就说得通了。用烟雾驱虫，结果食物自带烟熏味。然后人们还说这味道很棒。不过我个人不喜欢烟熏味。

Ah, that makes sense. So to keep bugs away, you fill the room with smoke, and then you end up with food that tastes smoky. Yeah. And then you tell people that it tastes good. I'm not a fan of smoke.

不知道为什么。可能因为大多数烟熏味尝起来...对我来说像化学制剂。不像真正的烟熏，倒像干墙板混着泡沫塑料燃烧的味道。

I don't know why. Yeah. Maybe it's because most smoky flavors seem to come from a kind of a It tastes chemical to me. It doesn't taste like smoke. It tastes like smoke generated from drywall mixed with some Styrofoam.

完全不是那种字面意义上有机的、天然的风味。就是一股化学制品的味道。

It doesn't it doesn't it's not it's not like a nice organic, in the real sense of the word, natural flavor to me. It tastes chemical.

我完全理解你的意思。确实大多数烟熏食品都过度处理了，烟熏味喧宾夺主成了唯一的风味，而不是作为背景基调存在。

Yeah. Yeah. No. I I I know exactly what you mean, and I also think that most smoked foods are over smoked. You know, that that ends up being the only flavor that the food has and instead of being a kind of in the background flavor.

然后呢

And what

说到波本威士忌这类酒，人们为何会对烟熏风味的波本如此狂热？你们这样做是因为——我实在想不通虫子会怎样影响发酵过程？是这样吗？

about in bourbons and things like that, where people get really excited about a smoky bourbon? Is that why would you do that? Because I can't imagine that the bugs we're gonna get into well, bugs like ferment. Right? Is that right?

没错。其实野餐时放点醋最能吸引昆虫，它们超爱

Yeah. Actually, one of great way to attract bugs to your picnic is to have vinegar there. They love

是的。醋的气味。对。所以蒸馏酒使用的橡木桶，据我观察完全是一种文化传统。

Yes. The smell of vinegar. Yeah. Yeah. So in the case of barrels for distilled beverages, that's, as far as I can tell, just a completely cultural thing.

知道吗？制作木桶需要烘烤让木材变得柔韧。嗯。可能某位制桶匠偶然发现，如果火候失控几秒钟，十年后反而会成就风味。所以烟熏味绝非酒精饮料的必备要素。

You know? That in order to make barrels, you have to heat them in order to make the wood wood pliable. Mhmm. And probably someone in the process of making barrels discovered that if you you know, if it burns out of control for a few seconds, that may be not such a bad thing ten years down the line. So, it's certainly not essential to the flavor of of alcohols.

比如许多威士忌会标榜使用雪莉桶陈酿，这样就没有新桶的烘烤味。我认为这纯属口味偏好，也考验酿酒师将风味融入饮品的技艺。

And a lot of of, for example, whiskeys may may be marketed as having been aged in used sherry casks. So you don't get the the toasting that you get if you're making fresh barrels. So I I think it's it's a matter of taste and and also just the the skill with with which that flavor has been incorporated into whatever the the food or drink is.

谈到发酵，我们斯坦福的同事桑嫩伯格——必须提他妻子埃里卡也做出关键贡献——发现每日食用低糖发酵食品比增加纤维摄入更能降低炎症指标。关于发酵化学和人类发酵实践，除了健康益处和风味，作为一门学问你有什么见解？人类发展出发酵技术真是奇妙。

On the topic of fermentation, our colleague I seem to be mentioning a lot of our colleagues, but we've got a lot of spectacular colleagues at Stanford, Sonnenberg, and to be fair, his wife Erica, who's also contributed critically to this work, have made discoveries essentially that consuming low sugar fermented foods on a daily basis can lower inflammation, markers of inflammation. Even more so than increasing one's fiber intake, which is itself interesting. What have you learned about fermentation, chemistry, fermentation as a human practice? For health benefit, sure, for taste, but just as as a thing. Fermentation's a pretty pretty wild thing that we would do this.

确实。我认为最早源于观察——熟透的果实落在林间，随时间推移开始冒泡变色散发异香

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I my sense is that it began we were talking earlier about about alcohol, began with just observation. You have fruits that are overripe, and they're sitting on the forest floor, and they sit long enough, and they begin to smell different and look different and fizz and all kinds of things.

这很有趣。地球上每个文明都独立发现了发酵技术，包括你以为难以发酵的北极圈。因纽特人珍视的

And that's that's interesting. So my sense is that fermentation has been discovered essentially by every population on the the Earth, including the the Arctic where you think it might take a while for things to go on. But in fact, products that are translated into English as stinkfish are among the most prized of the of the foods in the Inuit regions of the of the Pole. How do they prepare the stink fish? Essentially, by letting it sit.

发酵的魅力就在于省事——捕获食物后放入容器即可。有些臭鱼只需挖坑掩埋。阅读早期探险家记载很有趣：当地人热情款待的食物，探险家连靠近都需要勇气。

So that's one of the appeals of fermentation is that you don't have to do a whole lot. You just catch the food, whatever it is, and put it in a container of some kind. Some stingfish are made simply by digging a pit and burying it and covering it over. And then there's there's a connoisseurship of of these foods. It's a lot of fun actually to go back and read the accounts of explorers to these regions, and the the locals are, you know, trying to show the greatest hospitality by serving them foods that they can't bear even to get near.

以鲑鱼卵为例，经过发酵后成为备受推崇的美食，这就是鱼子酱。

Salmon eggs, another example, highly prized, but after they'd been fermented. So This is caviar.

没错。鱼子酱。地球上最昂贵的食物之一。

Yeah. Yeah. Caviar. Most expensive foods on the planet.

正是如此。完全正确。

Exactly. Exactly.

而且不仅仅是为了炫耀。鱼子酱的欧米伽三含量超高，还含有其他微量营养素——通常这些是鲟鱼卵对吧？

And not just for kind of for show reasons. I mean, the the omega three content of caviar is, like, off the charts, and the there are other micronutrients in in caviar that make it this is like the these are the sturgeon eggs typically. Right?

对。是的。没错。

Yes. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

二十年前鲟鱼几乎濒临灭绝，如今由于人工养殖的普及，产量激增。人们在全球各地养殖这些鱼类，并尝试用从未使用过的鲟鱼品种制作鱼子酱。这也反映了当下发酵食品的趋势：随着地球各地原本孤立的人群开始交流技术、分享食材知识（近二十年尤为显著），传统工艺不仅传播到世界各地，更引发人们思考——既然这种原料能发酵，换种原料会怎样？

Yeah. Which production of which almost disappeared twenty years ago and now is booming because people are now farming these fish. The the fish were endangered. They're now farming them all over the place and trying caviar from different species that had never been tried before. So that's actually part of what I would say about fermentation these days as well, is that once the the formerly isolated populations on the earth began communicating with each other and sharing expertise and sharing knowledge of these materials, which has happened, of course, hugely in the last twenty years or so, local traditional ways of doing things have now not only spread to other parts of the world, but gotten people to ask the question, well, if you can do this kind of fermentation with this raw material, what about doing it with a different raw material?

比如传统味噌用大豆制作，如今北欧改用豌豆生产，类似创新层出不穷。虽然难以追踪所有进展，但着实令人振奋——我们正见证微生物如何改造传统食材，这些微生物作用我们此前仅了解特定场景下的应用。未来几十年必将涌现各种新奇食物，初尝或许怪异，但就像当今的味噌、酱油、啤酒和葡萄酒一样，它们终将成为这个时代的美食标志。

So, you know, miso was traditionally made with soybeans. Now it's being made with peas in in Northern Europe, and just on and on and on, which I think is both tremendously difficult to keep up with, but also tremendously exciting, because it means that we're now seeing how traditional food materials can be transformed by action of microbes that we've we kinda know about, but only know about in very specific contexts. And so I I think the next couple of decades are gonna bring forth just all kinds of new foods that will be initially strange and maybe off putting because they're new, but also they're gonna be, you know, this this era's versions of miso and soy sauce and beer and wine and so on. So exciting times ahead.

是啊。我们常忘记人类仍在进化，特别是被世界问题困扰时。食品科技不仅制造了不健康的产品，更如你所说，创造了信息与实物的新融合。这不仅是复古传统。

Yeah. We we forget that we're still evolving. You know, especially when we hear about all the problems of the world. We we forget that we're still evolving and some of the technologies around food and drink are not just creating less healthy versions, but as you pointed out, creating new hybrids of information, new hybrids of actual foods. It's not all about returning to ancient ways.

像这样探讨慢食、咀嚼、烹饪艺术的对话——而非囫囵吞枣地吃包装食品——才是人们需要的。素食者、杂食者和肉食者难得达成共识的一点就是：少吃加工食品总归更好。

The conversations like this of slowing down and one's intake of food and chewing and appreciating and thinking about preparation of food, not just eating out of packages, one hopes. People I think if there's one thing that the vegans, the vegetarians, the omnivores, and the carnivores all agree on is that eating fewer processed foods is better. That's the one thing they all seem to agree on.

确实如此。

Yeah. Yeah.

我有个关于你的问题。实际上，有几个关于你的问题，是什么促使你探索食物与化学的？我的意思是，你对此采取了非常不同的方法。我该指出，你在加州理工最初的训练是天文学，后来转到了另一个领域，最终进入了食品科学与化学这个领域。你对诗歌也了解很多。

I have a question about you. Actually, have several questions about you, which is what motivated this exploration into food and chemistry? Mean, you're taking a very different approach to all of this. I should point out that your original training at Caltech was in astronomy, then you shifted to another field, and then ended up in this field of food sciencechemistry. You know a lot about poetry.

所以我觉得我从未遇到过有这种背景的人。你显然是个独一无二的存在，正如我们所说。是什么让你进入这个领域的，更重要的是，或许是什么激励着你？兴趣的纹理在哪里？是的。

So I don't think I've ever met anyone with that background. You are clearly an N of one, as we say. What got you into this whole thing, more importantly, perhaps, what motivates you? Where's the the texture of interest? Yeah.

是为了尽可能多地品尝不同的东西，还是为了连接不同层次的分析？到底是什么？

Is it, like, to taste as many things as possible, or is it to link levels of analysis? What what is it?

最后一个问题问得真好。我得在回答前面的问题时思考一下。是的，我最初热爱科学，尤其是天文学，还自己造了望远镜。现在每当猎户座出现在晴朗的夜空中，我依然会仰望。去加州理工学天文学，几年后觉得物理学不足以激励我继续走下去。

That last question is a really good one. I'll have to I'll think about that as I answer the first parts. So, yeah, I started out in love with science and with astronomy in particular and, you know, built a telescope. And I still look up at Orion every time it's in the sky, and the and the skies are clear. Went to Caltech to do astronomy, decided after a couple of years there that the the physics was just not enough of a motivator for me to keep going.

那时候物理对我来说已经相当艰深。所以我决定，虽然仍爱观星，但可能不会从事天文学了。然后我寻找其他方向，我一直热爱人文学科，尤其是诗歌和小说。其实我曾打算转学到斯坦福，但加州理工的几位文学教授说服我留下。

The physics had at that point had gotten pretty hairy for me. And so I decided, you know, I'm I I still love to look at the stars, but maybe I'm not gonna do astronomy. I then looked around for other things, and the people I I had always loved the humanities, poetry and novels in particular. I was going to transfer to Stanford, actually. And my literature professors at Caltech, and there were a a few, convinced me to stay.

他们说，你可以留下来，精选科学课程（因为不必修那么多），我们会为你在亨廷顿图书馆和研究图书馆安排座位，提供辅导，照顾你。后来确实如此。这段教育经历依然包含大量科学，但由我主导而非学科要求。受加州理工老师启发，我去了文学院读研，研究约翰·济慈的诗歌，毕业后却找不到教职。

And they said, what you can do is you can stay with us, cherry pick the science because you don't have to take as much anymore, and we'll get you a desk at the Huntington Library and the research library, and we'll we'll give you tutorials, and we'll take care of you. And that's exactly what happened. It was a fantastic education that still included plenty of science, but it was on my terms and not the not the discipline's terms. And then I went off to graduate school in literature, having been inspired by my teachers at Caltech. Did a degree there on the poetry of John Keats, and then couldn't get a job teaching.

于是加州理工和研究生院的导师们说，你毕竟有科学背景，该做点相关的事。长话短说，有次晚餐时和朋友喝酒聊天，有人问为什么吃豆子会胀气？大家都笑了。我笑着去图书馆查明了原因。

And so my my mentors back at Caltech and also at in graduate school said, well, you know, you have the science in your background. You should do something with that. And long story short, conversations with friends over the dinner table and drinking wine and so on, question came up, why is it that beans give you gas? And we all laughed. I laughed, and then I went to the library, and I found out why.

回来告诉朋友们，我们又大笑一场。然后我想，人们对食物感兴趣，而这是多数人不知道的趣味知识，或许我可以做这类事。于是开始深入研究。期间纽约某出版社的星探女友也在我们聚会中，她向他汇报了这事。

And I came back and told my friends, and we had a good laugh. And then I thought, maybe I mean, people are interested in food, and this is kind of a fun fact about food that most people don't know. Maybe I can do this kind of thing. So I I began to look a little more into it. And then in the meantime, a scout for one of the publishing houses in New York had a girlfriend who was in the same group, and she reported to him.

他转告出版商，出版商突然来电说：听说你在写一本关于食物科学的书？从那一刻起，我就在写这本书了。

He reported to the publisher. Publisher called up out of the blue and said, we hear you're writing a book about the science of food. And so from that moment on, I was writing a book about the science of food.

说，是的。嗯。是的。为什么吃豆子会胀气，提前用水浸泡真能去除部分...

Said, yes. Am. Yes. Why do we get gas from beans, and is it true that soaking them in water prior to cooking them can remove some

关于那种不良影响？原来答案是由为NASA工作的科学家发现的。想想NASA在七十年代的任务，就能理解他们为何想控制这类现象。豆类除了淀粉和糖分外，还含有一种中等大小的碳水化合物，我们的身体缺乏将其分解为糖分的酶。我们能消化淀粉，却无法处理这些中等大小的分子。

of that untoward effect? So it turns out that the the answer was discovered by scientists working for NASA. And if you think about NASA and their missions back in the seventies, you can understand why they would want to control something like this. So it turns out that beans contain, in addition to starch and sugars, kind of intermediate sized carbohydrates that our bodies do not have the enzymes to break down into sugars. So we can take care of starch, but but not these intermediate sized molecules.

这些分子未经消化进入肠道后，大量微生物会兴奋地分解它们。在此过程中，微生物会产生二氧化碳和氢气，这就是我们最终感受到的气体。解决方法包括浸泡豆子——这能滤出部分可溶于水的小分子。更有效的方法是浸泡后将水煮沸再倒掉，这样能去除更多这类分子。

And so they pass into our gut unchanged, and then we have plenty of microbes who are happy to see those and and digest them. And in the process, they produce c o two and hydrogen gas, and that's what we end up experiencing. So the way to deal with that is to soaking the beans will work That leaches out some of these molecules, which are small and so soluble in water. Even more effective is to actually bring that water after it's been soaking to a boil and then pour that water off. That that will get rid of more.

但关于这些低聚糖的另一点是：如今我们重视下消化道的菌群生态。这些分子实际上在滋养那些微生物。研究表明人体可以逐渐适应——初次食用豆类或扁豆时可能不适，但吃得越频繁，耐受性就会越好，系统最终能消化它们而不产生不适。

But the other point I would make about these so called oligosaccharides is these days, we value the life in our lower tract. And these are the creatures that those molecules are in fact feeding. So and it has been shown that you can you can or your system can kind of adapt. So, yeah, the first few times you have beans or lentils or whatever it might be, you may have some discomfort. But the more frequently you eat it, the better you're able to tolerate it, or your system is able to tolerate it without generating the discomfort.

这似乎是个反复出现的主题：我们越常吃某些食物，肠道菌群就越能适应它们。虽然对肠道菌群的研究才刚起步，但它确实至关重要。鉴于你对微生物组的了解，你会刻意食用发酵食品吗？你最喜欢的发酵食物或饮品是什么？

It seems to be a repeating theme, which is that the more we eat certain foods, the more our gut microbiome adapts to those foods. I think that we're just at the beginning of understanding the gut microbiome, but it's such a key player. So what, do you make it a point to eat fermented foods, given what you know about the microbiome? What are your favorite fermented foods or drinks?

是的，我后来喜欢上了泡菜。嗯...这原本不是我主动寻求的食物，但现在确实很享受。可能泡菜是我唯一会特意寻找的特殊发酵食品了。

Yeah. I have learned to like kimchi. Mhmm. So that was not initially a food that I sought out, but I've I've really come to like it. And, you know, that that may really be the only unusual fermented food that I seek out.

我平时大量食用水果蔬菜和豆类，觉得肠道大体能自我调节。但泡菜确实成了我的心头好。

I mean, I I love fruits and vegetables and and legumes and eat lots of those and kinda figure that, you know, things will take care of themselves down there for the most part, but kimchi is something I've come to love.

嗯...我还没能接受泡菜。几年前在圣地亚哥实验室时，我带过一次泡菜，结果除了那位韩国学生，全实验室都在抱怨。可能这类口味需要从小培养。

Mhmm. Yeah. I haven't quite gotten to the kimchi thing. I think it's because a few years ago, I brought it into my lab when I was in San Diego, and my entire lab complained, except one person, my Korean student, who absolutely loved it. So I think some of these things are acquired early in life.

这正好引出一个问题：当小孩抗拒西兰花或某些食物时，你认为这种厌恶反应是否基于他们体内某种重要的化学特性？

That's a question I was going to ask earlier. Do you think that when young kids in particular don't want broccoli or they don't want certain foods that it's reflecting an actual real aversion that's based on something important about their chemistry?

确实。虽然文献没有明确结论，但根据养育孩子的经验，我认为儿童拥有更敏锐的味觉嗅觉。发育早期他们什么都往嘴里塞，但某个阶段会变得保守——比如对西兰花的硫化物气味特别敏感。不过这种状态是暂时的，可以通过引导改变。

Yeah. Yeah. So my again, I don't think the literature is clear, but my sense based on having had a couple of kids go through this and just thinking it through, I I think what's going on is that kids have a heightened sense of taste and smell. And very early in development, they're omnivorous. They'll put anything in their mouths.

我们对孩子采取的做法是：每天正常准备晚餐，并告诉他们'可以自由选择吃多少，但这就是全部选择'。通过持续接触，他们最终会接受这些食物。

Then at a certain point, they become much more conservative. And and I think also much more sensitive to nuances, you know, the the sulfurousness of broccoli and that kind of thing. So but I think it's also both temporary, and you can work with it. So in the case of our kids, we just made our regular dinners every every day. And we would say to our kids, you're welcome to eat as much or as little of what we have as you want, but this is what we have.

有一种食物我儿子和女儿都无法接受，最后我们决定，好吧，这个真的不用勉强。你们不用为这个烦恼。那就是苋菜叶。哇哦。我还在花园里种了它们，因为你知道，我想了解所有东西，它们挺有趣的。

And there was one food that neither my son or daughter could tolerate, and we ended up just deciding, okay. That's literally off the table. You don't have to worry about this one. And it was amaranth leaves Woah. Which I was growing in the garden because, you know, I'm trying to learn about everything, and and they're interesting.

但它们有一种非常特殊的口感，就是那种质地让他们，你知道，会反胃。我不想让他们经历这个。所以很公平。这不只是说我不喜欢这个，而是他们真的尝试过了。

But they have a very particular texture, and it was the texture that they just you know, it made them gag. And I didn't wanna put them through that. So Fair. So it wasn't just saying, I don't like this. It was they were trying.

至少，不吃苋菜也能活得很好。听说有人喜欢香菜，有人讨厌香菜，是因为他们在香菜中尝到了不同的味道？比如，香菜对某些人的体验与其他人完全不同。我喜欢它。我父亲，他讨厌它。

If nothing else, one can still thrive in life without having eaten amaranth Is it true that some people like and some people loathe cilantro because they taste different things in the cilantro? Like, the experience of cilantro is fundamentally different for some people than others. I like it. My father, he he hates it.

是的。是的。香菜是个非常有趣的案例，也是莫奈尔化学感官中心一系列研究的主题。他们除了其他事情外，还会去当地的县集市，首先寻找双胞胎。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So cilantro is a really interesting case and, the subject of a series of, studies at the Monel Chemical Senses Center. They were they, in addition to all kinds of other things, would go to local county fairs and ask people ask, first of all, for twins.

如果他们在现场看到双胞胎，就会把他们带到摊位前，让他们都尝尝香菜并说出感受。归根结底，香菜含有某种分子，我本来想说会交叉反应，但不太准确。这些分子也存在于肥皂中。所以对很多人来说，取决于他们是否在生命早期接触过香菜，如果成年后才第一次遇到，他们的第一反应会是，这尝起来像肥皂。

If if they saw twins on the grounds, they would bring them over to the booth and ask them both to taste cilantro and say what they thought. Bottom line is cilantro has molecules that kind of, I was gonna say, cross react. That's not exactly it. They're also found in soaps. And so for a lot of people, depending on whether they've been acculturated to cilantro early in their lives or not, if they're only encountering it as an adult, the first thing they're gonna think is, that tastes like soap.

我不想把这个放进嘴里，除非，你知道，你在一个需要随大流的场合。所以这种分歧反应有很好的基础，但更多与这些相同风味分子的文化呈现有关，而不是物质本身。

I don't wanna put that in my mouth, unless, you know, you're in company where it's important to go along with the with the gang. So there's a good basis for this kind of divergent set of reactions, but it has more to do with the the cultural appearance of those same flavor molecules than with the material itself.

明白了。所以不喜欢香菜的人可以引用这次讨论。我在哈佛有个同事，凯瑟琳·杜洛克，研究嗅觉系统。你可能熟悉凯瑟琳的工作。

I see. So for those of you that don't like cilantro, you can cite this discussion. I have a colleague at Harvard, Catherine Duloc, who studies the olfactory system. You're probably familiar with Catherine's work.

她是的。

She's Yeah.

她姓杜洛克，是法国人。她会讲一个故事，关于她实验室里来自不同国家的学生和博士后，他们对微波爆米花的气味体验截然不同。有些人喜欢微波爆米花的味道，但另一部分人觉得微波爆米花的味道和刺鼻的呕吐物完全一样。她声称这是基于其中一个嗅觉受体的变异，这也说明了嗅觉和味觉之间的关系。你知道，没人想吃闻起来腐烂的东西。

And she's French, as the last name suggests. And she would tell this story about different students and postdocs in her lab who come from a variety of different countries being split down the middle in terms of their experience of microwave popcorn. That some people in her lab love the smell of microwave popcorn, but then there's a separate population of people in her lab that experience the smell of microwave popcorn as exactly the same as pungent vomit. And she claims it's on the basis of a variant in one of these olfactory receptors, which also speaks to the relationship between smell and taste. You know, like, nobody wants to eat something that smells putrid

是的。

Yeah.

确实。一般来说，人们会这么希望。还有哪些食物的例子是人们基于已知或几乎确定是生物因素而产生分歧的，而不是仅仅因为‘我从小没吃过’或‘那看起来很奇怪’？

Yeah. Generally, one would hope. What are some other examples of foods where people tend to diverge on the basis of something known to be, or almost certainly biological, as opposed to just, I wasn't raised eating that, or that seems weird?

我想到的一个不完全符合但相关的例子是帕尔马干酪，其主要风味成分之一是丁酸，这也是呕吐物气味的主要来源。有些人因此无法食用帕尔马干酪，有些人则察觉不到，还有些人虽然能感觉到但觉得可以接受。这就是帕尔马干酪的特色。

So one thing that comes to mind that isn't quite that is Parmesan cheese, which has as one of its primary flavor components, butyric acid, which is also the main thing that makes vomit smell like vomit. And some people just can't eat Parmesan cheese for that reason. Others don't notice it. Others kinda notice it, but it's okay. It's part of being Parmesan cheese.

所以很大程度上不仅取决于个体感受食物的方式，还取决于该食物通常应含有什么成分。由于牛奶脂肪中富含丁酸，当脂肪分解时就会产生这种味道。

So a lot depends on not only the sort of the individual apparatus experiencing a food, but then also what's kind of normal for that food to contain. And because cow's milk is especially rich in butyric acid as one of the components of the fats. That's what you get when the the breakdown takes place.

我喜欢帕尔马干酪这个例子。那我就多吃点。是的，都归我了。我最后一个问题不在食物或化学领域，而是关于诗歌的。

I like the example of Parmesan cheese. More for me. Yes. More for me. My last question is not in the domain of food or chemistry, but it's about poetry.

这是个科学健康播客，但你既然在这里又有专业知识，所以我得问问——我热爱诗歌。关于济慈，你了解到哪些大多数人不知道却特别有趣的事？然后我想请你推荐一个济慈入门套餐：选一首所有人都该读的济慈诗作，我们会附上链接。

This is a science health podcast, but you're here, and you have the expertise, so I'm going to ask you, I love poetry. What is something that you learned about Keats that most people don't know that is, at least to you, particularly interesting? And then I'll ask you to suggest a Keats starter pack. Maybe name one Keats poem that everyone should go read. We'll put a link to it.

第一个问题是：你花了大量时间研究济慈及其作品，有什么是我们从别处了解不到的？

First question is, you spent considerable amount of time researching Keats and learning about him and his work. So what's something that we're not gonna learn elsewhere?

好的。我认为他成长过程中最关键的一点——也是他创作出那些常与死亡主题相关的诗歌的原因——在于他最初是医学院学生。他曾在伦敦盖伊医院学医，这家医院至今存在且历史悠久。他母亲和兄弟都死于肺结核，他亲自照料过患病的亲人。

Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the most important things about his his development and the reason that he wrote the kind of poetry he did, which was often concerned with with death eventually, ultimately, is that he started out life as a medical student. He was a medical student at Guy's Hospital in London, which still exists and has a long amazing history. He was a medical student.

了解这些背景后再读像《秋颂》这样的诗（这正是我推荐大家读的作品），会为诗歌增添一层理解维度。这首诗表面只是描写秋日自然景象，毫无死亡痕迹，但那些经历始终存在。读这首诗乃至他其他作品时，能感受到他既想抚慰世人，也在通过诗歌理解生命本质——这正是他短暂一生需要面对的命题。

He had a mother and a brother who both died of TB, and he attended them in their illnesses. And so to know that and then to read a poem like To Autumn, which is the the poem that I would suggest people read, I think just adds a dimension of appreciation to that poem because there's there's nothing about death in the poem. It's just a description of a natural scene in the autumn, but that those experiences are there. And knowing that and reading not only that poem, but but many others, I'm sure it was well, I I think he wrote poetry both to comfort people and to kind of work through what it is that life is all about that he needs to come to terms with in order to have lived that that life.

感谢分享。我们会去读《秋颂》，并寻找诗中那些生命体验。有几点想说：首先非常感谢你来做客并分享知识，这肯定会改变人们体验饮食的方式。

Thank you for that. We will go read to Autumn, and we'll look for those experiences inside of that. Couple of things I wanna say. First of all, thank you so much for coming here and sharing your knowledge with us. I'm certain that it's gonna change the way that people experience food and drink.

至少能让大家学会细嚼慢咽，偶尔停下来深入感受食物。也很高兴——事实上非常难得——能在这个播客里不谈食物作为身体燃料或健康益处（这些固然重要），而是讨论其文化内涵、味觉体验，以及作为人生重要愉悦来源的意义。你教会了我们如何从食物中获得更多乐趣。

And if nothing else, we'll get them chewing their food and pausing between bites here and there to get deeper into the experience of food. It's also nice. In fact, it's very refreshing to be able to talk about food on this podcast, not within the context of just fueling the body and health benefits. Those are critically important, but obviously food has cultural aspects and it has taste aspects and is one of the great sources of pleasure in life. So you've taught us how to get more pleasure from food.

此外，还有它与历史及人类进化的关联。我是说，这里头学问太深了，我们会附上你那些探讨食物化学及其他方面的著作链接。我还想感谢你，无论有意与否，你完美示范了如何追随兴趣并融会贯通，以及如何通过与人分享兴趣获得变现机会。人们常困惑如何将多元兴趣整合成事业，总试图强行建立关联。

And also, its links to history and human evolution. I mean, there's so much there, and we'll put links to your books that explore chemistry of food and other aspects. I also just I want to thank you because whether you intended to or not, you're a wonderful example of how somebody follows their interests and blends them, and how talking about your interests with people can help you get opportunities to get paid to do what you do. People often wonder, how do I take my varied interests and put them into something? They'll try and thread the needle from this to that.