Cooking and enjoying food are a large part of what makes us human.Some researchers even argue that it was the invention of fire that allowed humans to develop our big brains, because it meant we no longer had to spend all day chewing and digesting raw food.Scientists are now starting to figure out that your brain likely has more to do with the flavor of food than your taste buds do.The term neurogastronomythe study of how the brain creates flavors that make eating food pleasurablehas only been around for a decade. But researchers in thefield arequickly revealing how these ideascould revolutionize the way we eat.Perhaps neurogastronomy could help us find new ways to feed the exploding world population, convince people they would rather eat a salad instead of a burger, make food palatable again for chemotherapy patients, or enhance the dulled flavor that foods have in space. Studying, understanding, and manipulating how the brain creates what we call "flavor" will lead to countless opportunities to change our relationship to food. And that's no small thing for the future of humanity.Dr. Gordon Shepherd, a neuroscientist at Yale, first coined the term "neurogastronomy" in a 2006 Nature paper, and later wrote a book on the burgeoning field. He told Tech Insider that flavor really comes from food molecules traveling through the back of your mouth and into the nasal passage. After that, specific receptors in the brain are activated. But from the perspective of someone eating, this complex process all happens seamlessly."When you sit down to eat, you'll be totally unconscious of this. It means that flavor, or taste, is an illusion," Shepherd said. "And if you start out [with the idea] that all of taste is an illusion, then there are many ways that the brain can be tricked."Other researchers have found that the color of the plates we use can affect how much food we eat, and that crunchiness is one of the most coveted features of food. Scientists are even starting to identify what effects different flavor compounds have on specific brain receptors.Neurogastronomy has come a long way in the short time since Shepherd first defined the term. The field now has its own international society that hosted its first conference in November 2015, bringingscientists and chefs together.Researchers at the conference presented their work introducing neurogastronomy principles to help cancer patients enjoy food more, since chemotherapy so frequently disrupts people's sense of taste and flavor. This research could be applied to other patients, too, since issues like traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's, and aging in generalalso tend to affect people's experience of flavor.A man attending the neurogastronomy conference plugs his nose and covers his eyes to experience what a huge effect seeing and smelling has on taste and flavor.Shepherd said neurogastronomy could also help people with eating addictions, and even play a role in fightingobesity or Type II diabetes one day. Multiple studies have found that food addictions can activate very similar parts of the brain that drug addictions do (though they are certainly not the same thing).Perhaps the most notable impact neurogastronomy could have would be on feeding the world. The United Nations expects the global population to surpass 11 billion people by 2100, and we already have enough trouble feeding the 7 billion people here already.Could neurogastronomy be the key to getting some wary eatersto switch out steak for grasshoppers'"In the societies in most of the rest of the world in which there isnt enough access to healthy food or any foodhow is the world going to deal with that'" Shepherd asked."I think that's exactly the possible and likely role that neurogastronomy, or any other umbrella term that deals with the relation between human feeding and human agriculture and survival, is going to play."Agricultural innovation will play a role here too, of course. But tricking our brains might proveeasier than remaking the world.SEE ALSO:The 9 reasons why people snap, according to a neurobiologistJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Here's how drastically food portions have changed in the past 20 years
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