hedonic escalation

I listened to an episode of the radio show 'One Dish' about cheese. I heard something in there that seemed at first to contradict what I believed about processed food. It is the idea of 'hedonic escalation'. The idea is that the more flavours that a food contains then the more it will be enjoyed.

By 'more flavours' I mean things like sweet, sour and salty. It doesn't seem to mean the flavours of herbs and spices, which are as much to do with our olfactory sense than the four of five tastes from the tongue.

For a long time I have believed that processed food lacks flavour, and to make up for it they add sucrose, glucose syrup, citric acid and salt. Sucrose and glucose have the same function, but they like to add glucose even though it is more expensive because then both come further down the list of ingredients. That makes it look better for them. It doesn't look good to have 'sucrose' at the top of your list of ingredients.

People are so used to everything tasting sweet, sour and salty that they don't know or want anything else. Their food doesn't taste of vegetables, herbs and spices because these subtler flavours cannot be retained well for months in a can or a plastic tray. Most people now in Britain and America would think there was something missing if their food wasn't both sweet and sour.

I have always felt that sugar spoils the flavour of any savoury food. I dislike an aftertaste of sucrose and citric acid. So I didn't like this idea of hedonic escalation. The show seemed to be saying that sweet and sour are something people naturally crave.

However, on doing some research I realise that it doesn't mean this. Research shows that it is salt, sugar and fat which enhance each other's flavours. Another one of my long-standing beliefs is that there is a problem with combinations of sugar and fat. It seems to me that when they are combined you can't really taste all of the sugar and fat. So you will eat more before it becomes unpleasant.

Some people say they have a sweet tooth. Yet few people will eat sugar from a sugar bowl. Neither will people eat scoops of butter. That would be disgusting. Put them together in a cake though and people will happily eat lots of sugar and butter. Cake just doesn't seem that sweet or that fatty. This is one reason why we have so much obesity.

It's not just cake, it is chocolate, donuts, ice cream and many other common foods that are like this. Combinations of sugar and fat. We are told by evolutionary psychologists that we keep eating because on the savanna where we supposedly evolved we were uncertain when we could eat next. I don't believe that though: sugar and fat were never encountered together by hunter-gatherers. Protein and fat yes, in a hunted animal.

I think that is part of the reason why the Atkins diet works. Fat that hasn't been sweetened is less palatable. Sugar that hasn't been mixed with fat likewise. Perhaps you could have a diet where you have no carbohydrate one day and no fat the next. You will never encounter cake, chocolate etc.

So I am quite happy to accept that salt, sugar and fat together are the problem. And I am happy to continue to believe that people should not accept their sweet and sour savoury processed foods. I think the traffic light system is a disaster. You can't complain about mayonaisse, taramasalata and hummus containing sugar because you will be told that it's a low-sugar product. But mayonaisse, taramasalata and hummus should be no-sugar products. Just as a cottage pie for an old person should be. If you eat low-sugar products throughout the day you end up eating a lot of sugar.

Marks and Spencer had a brand of hummus that contained sugar. That's not usual, but I can't seem to buy mayonnaise or taramasalata anywhere that doesn't have sugar in it.

This has an effect on blood sugar levels. They go up high then come down low. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are the result. The health service will become even more overstretched.

Why should a cottage pie for an old person contain sucrose and glucose? These are not ingredients in a traditional cottage pie. I don't want a pizza with a sucrose and citric acid aftertaste. I want a pizza where I can taste the herbs, the vegetables and the dough. I don't want a curry that tastes sweet, I want one where I can taste the turmeric, the ginger and the coriander (chilli is one flavour that is retained but I don't want too much of that either).

I know that chefs sometimes add sugar to a pasta sauce to counter the acidity of the tomatoes. That acidity though comes from citric acid added by the manufacturer. If chefs want to be clever then let them source tomatoes that have naturally ripened and have not had these quite large amounts of citric acid added. You would think that a can of tomatoes is a basic natural product: it could be but it's not.

The first time I had pasta with a puttanesca sauce I liked it. I thought it tasted of seafood. That's because of the anchovy. Now all pasta sauces taste the same. You can't buy puttanesca that that tastes of seafood. It tastes of sugar and citric acid.

It's not as if processed foods are cheap. You can buy a kilo of rice for about 45p. Dhal is just about the cheapest high-protein dish you can make. Especially if you make it with yellow split peas. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans. I've had some delicious dhal but also some unpleasant dhal. Dhal and rice together with vegetables (in the form of subzi) is cheap and nutritious. Millions of people in India eat it every day.

You wonder what effect added sugar and acid have on people's teeth. You can't expect a Conservative government to try to restrict companies, they would see that as red tape. Better to dose the water supply with fluoride. However a new study shows that fluoridation has little benefit for children. We have always known that it has no benefit for adults.