Have you ever wondered why certain foods evoke strong emotional reactions in you? Why do you find comfort in eating chocolate but feel indifferent about lettuce? What is it about cauliflower or Brussel sprouts that makes you dislike them so intensely? How do my childhood memories influence my current food choices? Why does the aroma of freshly baked bread make me feel nostalgic and happy?
These questions highlight the complex relationship between our neural responses and our food experiences, revealing the deep connections that shape our dietary habits. Enter Thimus, an international member of CFIN that delves into the interplay between our brains and our taste preferences, a critical factor for food developers.
Thimus is pioneering methods to quantify how we emotionally respond to what we eat. Their T-Box offers insights that can transform product development and marketing strategies in the food industry.
I had the opportunity to email interview @Mario Ubiali , CEO and founder of Thimus, and have compiled his responses that provide a glimpse into the innovative work they are doing at Thimus.
To start, can you introduce yourself, Mario, and tell us a bit about your background and what Thimus is all about?
My name is Mario Ubiali, I’m 51, and I was born and raised in a rural area in the North of Italy. I started out my adult life as a philosophy Major from the University of Parma and I went on to become a small entrepreneur, in line with my father’s family tradition (4 generations). I have been a small entrepreneur for 22 years now, with a successful exit completed in 2014 and now this amazing adventure with Thimus that gives me the opportunity to merge an interest for humans, with some of the most cutting-edge science available. We have worked very hard (and still do) to use sensory neuroscience to uncover objective data on emotional and cognitive response to food experiences.
How does Thimus uncover the emotional connections we have with our favourite foods through neuroscience?
The process is quite straightforward, at least in principle. We utilise a device that is very well-known in scientific research: the electroencephalogram (EEG). This device captures the brain’s electrical activity, which is fundamentally the very sign of brain processes happening.
We have created a very agile, portable platform called the T-Box, that digitises implicit brain responses of humans experiencing food. Once we capture that electrical signal, we use proprietary algorithms to clean it, aggregate it, and analyse it. The output is a series of easily readable emotional and cognitive metrics: implicit liking, familiarity, relaxation, and emotional engagement.
We already know what happens when humans eat and drink, but the big news is that we can now measure their implicit response and create quantifiable KPIs for product development and testing.
What are some surprising emotional reactions you've found in your research on how people experience food?
I think the surprising but also encouraging emotional reactions we have found are all connected to humans attaching meaning and emotion to what they eat.
We have seen the brain react to food experiences in a highly positive way when the plate was, for example, prepared by somebody they have a good relationship with.
We have seen enhanced emotion in sharing food with others, an aspect that I think must induce the food and beverage industry to reflect on how food can be created with a meaning, with a differentiation to diverse humans.
I know it sounds romantic and complicated, but ultimately if food manufacturers can make people feel like taken into consideration, it would make their business extremely successful.
How can food companies use Thimus' insights to create products that deeply resonate with their customers?
By testing their products while they are developing formulations, packaging, use cases. Inserting sensory neuroscience in early stages of product design allows iterating two or three times and fine-tuning the response we would like to see in customers.
Imagine that I am a food company and I see that emotional engagement is low and implicit acceptance is low, maybe I am seeing this response in the aftertaste of my product, or maybe in the visual approach. This allows me (as a food company) to intervene and improve what doesn't work. In the end, it’s a design thinking approach supported by advanced neuroscience!
How do personal and cultural backgrounds shape our emotional responses to food, and how does Thimus explore these differences?
Personal and cultural backgrounds greatly shape our emotional responses on several levels. On a purely physiological level, recent epigenetic studies demonstrate that our sensitivity to certain taste is a product of the food habits of our parents and grandparents. So in a way, we tend to have a predisposition to enjoy what's in the culture of our family and our familial habits.
On the other hand, there is how we experience food, who prepares it for us or with us, the memories built around it, the way we use it for sharing and bonding: all of these elements concur to our overall emotional response to food.
Our brain implicitly react to food as the progressive stratification of experiences, memories, sensorial stimuli, cultural influences, epigenetic and genetic inheritance, etc.
It’s a beautiful, complex, ramified piece of our body where our most valuable assets are generated: emotion and meaning.
What ethical considerations does Thimus address when using neuroscience to study and influence consumer experiences with food?
It’s a very complex question.
On one hand, I want to say up front that anyone volunteering to use our technology in a panel is very aware of the technology, of the data we collect, why and how. Information and transparency are the number one step in the journey.
As per the use that corporates make of data, it’s an old dilemma: are we selling a hammer to somebody with mean intentions? For Thimus, what matters the most is that, by using the T-Box, food corporations are learning that implicit data is very solid and objective. Many times, they don’t see what they hope to see and they have to get used to sticking to objective measurement. So the data is educating and shaping the way they can use it.
Manipulation today is mostly coming from other sources: choosing certain ingredients, pushing on messaging and marketing, leveraging social pressure. We are only providing an amazing new tool to enter a completely new layer of information. In doing so, we are strongly encouraging companies to understand the complexities of human food emotion and therefore to care for improvements to their products that would cater to it.
Finally, we want to make sure the T-Box is 100% accessible even to small players, startups and academia. That’s why in 2024 we have been building an international network of special places where F&B players can find our technology for them to use it without being asked to purchase a full license. These places are called House of Humans and we are partnering with amazing entities and announcing the openings in Valencia (Spain), Milan (Italy) and Wageningen (Holland).
We are receiving lots of international interest towards this format, because local partners can really offer something unprecedented to their stakeholders. We are in fact open to discussing with interested parties in Canada, if anyone reading this is enticed!
Thursday Thought on Foodtech is an experimental column or post co-written between my colleague @Lavina Gully and myself. We may use generative AI tools to research and enhance the content. When content from AI tools is used, it is credited in the post. Follow us every Thursday for more thoughts on Foodtech, after our 2024 summer break!
Disclaimer: None of the organizations, companies, or products mentioned in this article are sponsors of this content.