Rethinking Food Innovation: Neuroscience in the driving seat

This episode of Borderless Executive Live is brought to you by our Partner, and Food & Beverage sector specialist, Brian Hughes. He is joined by Mario Ubiali, CEO and Founder of Thimus, a revolutionary company that uses the tools of cultural neuroscience to gain an in-depth understanding of the behavior and motivations that drive human beings towards their chosen food. Thimus builds a holistic vision of how neurophysiological processes intertwine with cultural, social, and epigenetic elements to impact what we eat.

In this insightful episode, Brian and Mario discuss what the science says about the links between our brains and our relationships with food, how we can change our behaviour and how these insights can importantly help shape the future food landscape in a sustainable, innovative, and ethical way. 

Brian Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hughes-736b6030/ 

Mario Ubiali: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marioubiali/

Transcript

0:05

Hello, and welcome to Borderless Live. I'm very happy to welcome my guest today, Mario Ubiali. So, Mario is the CEO and co-founder of Thimus. Thimus is a unique company devoted to helping us better understand how we experience food via cultural neuroscience. So, you are a group of engineers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and sensory analysis experts who are seeking to shape the debate on the future of food, and how to prevent the future food systems from wiping out the enormous wealth of different food cultures that we have today. That's a very nice sounding introduction, I have to say. Your intro to Thimus probably needs to be taken in the direction of introducing myself individually, not because my story is particularly interesting but it tells a little bit of the specificity and how unique I feel the Thimus ensemble is today as a group of people working on a project. I am in fact a business person who came to Thimus as an investor. I came in contact with the world of neuroscience, outside of clinical applications. And I was kind of lured into it by the fascination as an investor. I co- founded Thimus with a partner who's no longer in the business. And so, I often use this kind of little joke to say that I came for the investment but I really stayed for the impact and the mission. I feel that who we are really needs to be expressed into projects. And we live in an era in which I think everybody's desire is that of having an impact. And so, I feel very happy and fulfilled that Thimus has evolved through the years. In fact, we are in a place where I feel that we can now have a voice globally and interject in the debate about the future of food. Absolutely. Well, one of the things I suppose that came to my mind first when I heard about Thimus, and by the way, it was actually at the Food Ingredients conference in Paris that I came to know Thimus, you had a very interesting debate down there during one of the lunch and learn sessions. But maybe you could just let people know a little bit about essentially what Thimus does. How you do it? Of course, very importantly, why you do it. Exactly. So, let's start from the the what and how first. A lot of people who approach cultural neuroscience, or just neuroscience as a whole, are very fascinated by the idea that there's a set of disciplines which are entirely devoted to studying, researching, documenting, digitizing to a point. What happens in human brains as we live our lives. And for the longest time neuroscience has been mostly a discipline connected with medical applications, clinical applications. So, it lived within the domain of working on specific medical conditions and trying to improve the life of people who are unfortunately sometimes affected by specific kinds of illnesses. In recent years, the technology deployed to actually have access to data on brain activity was made available for uses that would be other than clinical. In other words, it's literally like you have gone from an era in which to fly to the moon, you would have to be NASA, to an era in which metaphorically, with a good degree of investment and preparation, you can actually go to the moon with the limited forces and strengths of a private corporation such as Thimus. And so, this unique opportunity in technological terms has propelled Thimus in a space where we can take the tools of neuroscience and most notably, we deploy electroencephalograms, little tiny pieces of machinery fairly well-known in the medical application. So, like electrodes, right? That is correct. And so, what does Themis do? And how do we do it? We can tap into the complexity of the human experience with food by going straight to the implicit level of that kind of experience. And then, once we have a good idea of what's going on in real time, in the brain of humans interacting with food, we try to explain - this is the how- to explain and characterize- okay, what was the reaction? What were the emotions and the cognitive processes during that experience? By taking that specific set of data and correlating in data analysis that specific set of data with other pieces of data relating to groups of people, communities, cultural profiles and so forth, the result is - and this is where we get to the why if you will, Brian - the result is we have an unprecedented access to a better, deeper understanding of what are the dynamics. So, the why we do this is in fact - and I know it sounds like a little bit of a play on words but the why we do this is because we can tell the why people interact with food in one way or the other. So cultural neuroscience is making available to the F&B space - corporate-wise, stakeholder-wise-an unprecedented understanding of factors leading humans to embrace food experiences, to identify food items and preparations, to go through certain cognitive and emotional states as they consume food. And so you could say with a not too far-fetched slogan, that it's really the why of food emotion that really matters to us. And so the why we do this is because we think that food emotion needs to be brought back on a level of dignity by being studied with scientific and rigorous research, on a level of dignity that it deserves as a fundamental mechanism in human behavior, and in human cultural and symbolic lights. And we believe it's not just occasional or just a plus, it's very instrumental to how we think also about the future of food. Wow, absolutely fascinating take on it, Mario. And that role of emotion, why do you think that is so important? Or why is it important and how can it actually impact the future of food? How can this information that you're gathering actually make a difference? Well, it matters so much because it is ingrained, even in biological terms, in the actual functioning of human beings. And as such, it plays a functional, important role in decision-making and in behavior. Obviously, if you look at this a little more historically, so to speak, especially in the West, we are coming from at least one century of very deep debate but also evolution in the direction of faith in technology, a certain idea of the role of science that is called the secularization of culture. So, we apparently have been very hardly trying to get away from magic, religion, symbolism and the likes. In this process, we have also gone through a historical societal process that has censored emotion as being something that is an intangible, semi-romantic notion. Now, this is where I feel that emotion needs to be reassessed in a completely different light. And this is what I love about cultural neuroscience. cultural neuroscience is, as I said before, dignifying the debate on emotion and the role that emotion plays in human behavior by turning on a spotlight and saying- guys, we can talk about this scientifically. We can collect and digitize data on the implicit elements that drive human behavior. Better nutrition in the evolution of humans has dictated the evolution of the actual ability of humans to be complex machines brain-wise, right? The introduction of cooking food, the introduction of agriculture, access and stability, and varied diets, all of that is contributing. So, how can we really think, if we kind of place ourselves in this historical perspective - coming from a history in which we have been evolving with this very intertwined relationship with food and food being part of our emotional discourse, and symbolic and cultural discourse- how can we really project ourselves into the future of food, if we don't embrace and acknowledge that emotion will continue to play a role in this timeline. Yeah, just coming back to to the debate on the future of food on sustainability. When you go down to a place like Paris to that conference center, those three days that we spent there, there was just so much debate, so much talk. So many fascinating companies that are looking to disrupt the current status, the current status quo of the food industry. The way food is, the whole global supply chains even. Obviously, the whole debate as well on plant-based alternatives to meat. I mean, it's really exploding at present and that debate is really a very, very current one. But why? Why is it now? Why is it happening now? Why is it so critical? And what is your take on the current status of food waste, for example, and sustainability? I am under the impression that as long as we only focus, for example, on a very Western-centric vision of the current climate and geopolitical, economical crisis on a global level, and we think we can put on the table a number of solutions that are still being generated by the same mental framework that actually generated the problem. A certain version of capitalism, and mind you, look how I'm dressed, I'm not here to waive any political flag, least of all a red flag. But I do think that it's very important that we're self-conscious in terms of- okay, guys, let's be aware of where we stand today is because there are certain philosophical mental premises that we have accepted blindly for a number of years, one of them being the law of infinite growth. But on a planet that has limited resources, it's a very simple point that a ten year old and an eight year old could actually make in a debate, which is, how exactly are we supposed to keep growing and growing and growing every single quarter, economically and financially, without having a footprint? And so, I guess, the why now, the hidden why now is that behind the effects of the climate crisis and a geopolitical crisis, you have another crisis. It's the crisis of a model, a model of consumption, a model of production. And in food, oh my gosh, again, food is the nexus. Because in food, you have all those nerves coming together. Because you have everything in food. You have the cultural aspect, you have the footprint on soil usage, you have transportation and CO2 emissions on logistics, you have equity and fair trade or fair treatment of workers. Everything converges in food. Food is really the sum of all fears, if you will, but it's also maybe the sum of all solutions. I'm not necessarily a pessimistic person. Absolutely. I mean, it's fascinating listening to you, Mario. And obviously, I could just let you talk and it will be a fascinating discussion. But it would be great as well just to hear concretely -without obviously revealing any names - but to give us an idea of the kinds of questions that customers have for you. Like your clients, when they come to you, what are their burning issues? And maybe give us an idea of what kinds of projects you're doing for them or what direction you're guiding them in and where their concerns are? Well, thank you, because I think this is helping me come back to earth here, because I tend to fly around a lot when I get excited about this topic, Brian. No, it's great. But thank you, because it allows me to be more specific. So, in this day and age, I find that customers coming to us- Well, first of all, it's interesting, I should already say, we have customers in the form of corporate customers. But we have increaingly, a number of other stakeholders who are coming to us for research. We have academic stakeholders who are partnering with us. A great example- the Alt: Meat Lab at UC Berkeley, the Postgraduate School for Environmental Studies at the Catholic University of Milan, the food technology classes and courses at Politecnico di Milano. We're starting to have conversations with McGill University and so forth. So, first of all, it's different people coming to us, what are they coming for? And what are the tangible projects that we're working on without naming names? On average, the real question, the real underlying question, Brian, is always the one about why are humans embracing a certain food practice, a certain consumption of food in a certain context for a certain food category? And how can I better understand that mechanism so that I can, as a company, as a stakeholder in general, propose changes, new habits, new products, new use cases? A very dear friend of mine, I think he's gonna be pleased if I just name him because he's a great guy, César Vega, who has written books about food and he's been a top manager in very large food companies and still he is, usually tells me- I don't like to talk about a food product, I like to talk about food solutions. I guess I could say that companies are coming to Thimus to help them design better food solutions for the present and future of humanity. Because they know that we have access in a documented, scientifically rigorous way to the why, to the inner functioning of that mechanism, which determines whether humans would decide to go out and buy the product again. And again, I want to be more specific, let's give a very tangible example. We're able to measure a mental state that is called frontal assymetry. Frontal assymmetry is actually the index you measure, the mental state you're actually expressing, it's called Approach-Avoidance Index. The Approach-Avoidance Index what we measure on an implicit level, you have to think of it as the instinctively implicit level of your brain having certain food items, and instinctively wanting to be in that experience. So, it's an approach kind of idea, or kind of retracting from it. And we measure that in real time as people are tasting something. Now, the big discovery so to speak in 2022, we were able to prove in several researches, including ones about plant-based products, that after you swallow a sample of a product that you're tasting, after you swallow the first bite or the second bite, there is a stage in that experience in your brain where you implicitly decide whether that product was something that you would like. But more so, we then correlate it to explicit declarations of intent to purchase and intend to consume that product. So, what I'm trying to say is, companies come to us because they know that we have a way to help them understand what factors in the food experience will dictate the behavior of people. And that's a very powerful notion to go with. So, of course, if you take that notion from the technical level of being able to do it and you elevate it to why are they coming to us, it's because like you said, before, we live in the age of cultured meat, plant-based alternatives, anything that is new food. Is there any such thing as new food to the human brain? How do you as a company think of disseminated food solutions for 10 billion humans who luckily enough, as last time I checked, are still quite different, one from the other. And this is where cultural becomes important in the cultural neuroscience equation. It's the ability to help company and stakeholders put those two things together, understanding what will work behaviorally depending on the cultural context of humans, that's what we're really good at and that's what they come to us for. Excellent. Thank you very much for clarifying that, Mario. That's fascinating work, obviously, that's going on. Now, in my introduction, one of the things that I had mentioned there was that you're trying to prevent future food systems from wiping out the enormous wealth of food cultures. And whether we're in Paris or at another conference, you really get the sense that there are dispersed, small companies, start-up companies that are trying to disrupt global systems that are in place and heavily entrenched. If we are to help humanity and face the obvious challenges that are ahead, surely, these small little start-ups or these small little groups won't actually be enough? So, my question is- how is that shift going to happen? Where is the disruption going to come from? What is going to actually drive the disruption of the existing system? I'll start by saying that I think it's going to start by working on culture and working on disseminated awareness. Mainly I'm saying that because that's really part of the mission for Thimus. We have made a very conscious decision to be working on the topics of human relationships with food in a cultural sense, and in an emotional sense, because we would like to promote a very general public awareness by doing educational initiatives with different academic partners and conferences, and we plan to publish white papers and so forth. So, where does it start? First of all, I think it's like anything else, it starts with thoughts. It starts with having a specific well-cultivated ability to offer a reading of reality. You know, I know it sounds extremely abstract and I don't mean to lose the listeners here. On the contrary, what I'm trying to get across is the message that there is no such thing as changing a system if we do not work on how we change the way people think. We hear that all the time. But when it comes to changing how they think, I don't think it's just that, it's thinking and behaving are connected, and what connects them is emotion. So, where do we start to add in an impact? Number one- education. Number two- let's not polarize the debate. Let's be clear. Thimus is working for very large multinational companies, we're not radical Crusaders, the Che Guevara of neuroscience who refuse to do work with the large corporations. Come to think of it, if you can instill the seed of change within a larger company that has a global footprint, maybe you even can have a larger impact. So, there is a trend where I'm also thinking it is our duty, as a group of people in our company, not to shut those out. It's so easy, Brian, to stay outside of the wall and shout at people - oh, we're here outside and we think we're better than you. What if you stay within the system, and you try to make changes within? So, education, working with the companies who can have a large global impact by trying to get into their own company culture, and get to expose them to the richer complexity of factors. And then there is a duty we have to our own land. This year, we will inaugurate a place for research that is going to be placed inside a 16th century monastery in the hills of a winemaking region in northern Italy. The symbolic value of that, Brian is that we have decided as a third way of adding an impact is to start doing something where you live, where you operate. And so, we also recently incorporated in Canada, we want to have a similar presence in Canada. Wherever we are as a company, we encourage every company, every player out there to think that the impact can be generated on a local level by working on projects that would promote the richness and complexity of local food systems. For example, we plan to support the monastery research activities that they're doing on cheesemaking, winemaking on a local level by supporting them in opening the local restaurants to expose communities to the culture and the richness of those products. But we also plan to take those ingredients and fly them - theoretically, and not in practice - but fly them around the world to tell the story of this richness, so that everybody can feel empowered. Because I also believe, to wrap it up in a circle, that in the contradictions of the present time, we feel at Thimus - and we're studying and working a lot on this - there is a good solution to having an impact, which is recuperating a bio-regional approach to the food systems. Think of the global scale of technology being decentralized to local food systems. So, you take the richness of the history, the culture and the emotion that comes with that history, and you merge it with everything that is available now. And the result is the 21st century version of something that comes from history, gives continuity to cultures and lands. But it's also projected into a more sustainable future. And it sounds maybe very idealistic but if I have to choose between one idealistic stance and the other, I'd rather embrace this vision of creating continuity through emotion and culture and technology, rather than placing my blind faith into technology solving it all. Yeah, absolutely. Going on to the Thimus website and having a look around at the different topics that you guys engage with- I've heard you talk about this before in Paris, about the food and brain behavior. The interaction we think there is between our brain and food is absolutely not one way. It's not just- okay, here I am exposed to food, I'm eating food, and therefore my brain responds to the stimuli by putting in place those mechanisms that Thimus measures so well- the implicit emotion, the cognitive processes. Yes, that exists but it's a loop and a feedback. There is proven, very vast literature on refined sugar, white sugar being the equivalent of methamphetamine. So, there are reward mechanisms in eating food that is very rich in sugar. There are plenty of recent studies on the correlation between eating highly processed food and being subjected to a number of effects in terms of cognitive capacities - or in the longer term, even in clinical terms or medical terms - being subjected to specific pathologies and ailments. There is also an element of the brain regulating hunger mechanisms and satiety. So, how we perceive satiety. I can think of a number of studies we conducted, for example, where you expose individuals to the consumption of sweet snacks. Recently, we were doing the study on indulgence as perceived in the consumption of very classic, very staple, sweet snacks. And it's interesting to observe how the brain intakes certain foods and as a consequence of that then tends to biochemically regulate your sense of satiety, or your sense of more hunger. And, of course, a few basic emotions, which are emotional states we go through as a byproduct of having chosen to consume one thing or the other. There's a very famous example in this that says that the brain has a self-regulation mechanism to seek food that would satisfy the current needs of the general physiology of the body. So, in a very old-fashioned academic example, they say, when you go to an ice cream parlor and you're choosing what flavor of ice cream you're going to have that day, in fact, you're choosing that on the basis of your conscious, cultural or symbolic, or just by random choices, but you're not your brain is choosing for you on an implicit level, based on whether in that particular moment you're craving, physiologically you're craving sugars, rather than fats rather than protein. So, this is such a multi-layered and complex axis that is still being explored. And just to mention, because it's very relevant, we've all heard about the Gut-Brain Axis, and the relationship between the brain and the gut, also in terms of microbiome influencing cognitive function. So again, being a bi-directional kind of relationship, I feel that at Thimus right now, we're very focused on the layer of brain reaction to food experiences that is more connected with the emotional aspects and cognitive aspects in relation to who humans are demographically, and culturally. But you cannot ignore that that also takes along a component that is much more physiological. So, it's a little bit of a closing clue on that. Thimus is now getting more engaged with epigenetics and genetics. There are very interesting recent studies which correlate implicit brain response to food experiences to who you are genetically, and also what your parents and grandparents ate, long before you were actually born, that carries on and has an influence on the so called epigenetic level of the functioning of the body, which includes the sensory apparatus. So, it is partially proven by recent science that certain populations would have a certain sensory leaning towards spicy rather than salty rather than sweet, based on the carrying on of certain habits. Yeah, this is fascinating stuff, Mario. Absolutely interesting. For me as well, I am fascinated by the kind of work that you guys do, the studies that you do. And maybe just as a closing question- how do you think neuroscience will design or help design or inform the design of sustainable food products going forward? The real core of the answer is that neuroscience will help the future sustainable evolution of food systems by making sure that what we will collectively design as being the food of the future, will be designed with the right criteria in mind so that we can make sure that humans will embrace, will go on and repeat a certain behavior. The truth of the matter is, if we want to save food systems and the planet and humans at the same time, we will have to come up with solutions that are widely adopted at any latitude for repeated consumption. And so, neuroscience will definitely be at the core of that conversation because we will provide anyone who's interested in looking at that long-lasting effect and impact the tools to measure, understand, measure again and verify that a food solution is designed in a way that humans can embrace. The technology will make a better product but again, wrong question. The question should have been- in how many cultures and in what culture cultural group do we really expect humans to act repeatedly in the consumption of an alternative meat burger on the premises that that will save the planet if that burger has no attachment to who they are, their habits, their identity, their social behavior? So, neuroscience will help the future of food sustainability by suggesting ways to make food that humans will embrace and adopt. And we want to be in the game from day zero, we are in the game from day zero. And that's also the reason why we're going all out on this topic and saying- we will have our own research centers, places where chefs, restaurants, companies, stakeholders, policymakers, artists will come together to debate how we take everything we have already in the history of humans, and make it sustainable for the future. We're under the impression it will have to be decentralized, it will have to be customized to different cultures and different groups. So, is alternative meat failing? At present, it will find its own way. But is the debate around alternative meat the core of the debate on the future of food systems? No, it isn't. And that is, in my opinion, where we will be very vocal throughout 2023 at every public opportunity we will have in saying we're not against anyone. This is also a time to be constructive and not polarizing. We're not trying to say we're against something, we're just saying- guys, the answer is so much more complex and so much wider. Why do we have to just think that it's all the eggs in one basket? There is immense diversity, we work with, with people in LATAM, in the Middle East, in Singapore, in Central Europe, and we want to keep it at that. We want to tap into indigenous food cultures in Canada, in the Amazon, and at the same time be at the forefront of the debate about bio-reactors. One thing doesn't exclude the other. Why? Because at the very center of that place and equation, guess what, there's always human beings. So, as long as there will be human beings, we will always be on topic at Thimus because we focus on human beings Absolutely. Well listen, here's to your success. And I would encourage people of course to go and check you out. Fascinating company, fascinating organization, and wonderful, wonderful stuff. Thanks so much, Mario. Thank you so much, Brian.