Food critical to human thought

The link between food and thought is complex and ingrained in human behavior, a professor explained in a lecture Monday.

Dr. John Allen of the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center and the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California spoke in Lindley Hall about the correlation between food, the brain and behavior.

His lecture, titled “Theory of Mind, Theory of Food?” demonstrated his position on a topic open for questions and future debate.  

To generally understand the correlation between the two theories, Allen first defined Theory of Mind, originally proposed by professors David Premack and Guy Woodruff in 1978, as the necessity to predict others’ behavior when socially interacting. His example: When a mother holds a banana to her ear and talks into it, a child has the ability to recognize the social act and correlate the fruit with a telephone.

As humans grow, we learn and acquire motor, perception and attention domains, according to the theory. Such complex cognitive skills become “second nature,” Allen said.

Allen applied similar theoretical aspects to the way humans perceive food.  

“The Theory of Food is an implicit, cognitive representation of diets in our minds,” Allen said.  

Allen explained that food is critical to social, communicative and reproductive behaviors that are influenced by family and socio-cultural environment. Food perception can be broken down into the way an individual thinks about food and the “normative” diet habits and behaviors of an individual.

Evolutionary history also plays a key role in modern foodways, he said. Two anatomical landmarks of human evolution are bipedality (walking on two legs) and brain expansion.  

Food was likely a critical factor in contributing to a growing brain size, Allen said. Additionally, humans’ “super omnivory” trait implies their wide dietary spectrum and ability to consume meat and plant products alike. However, it is relevant to note that not all cultures eat all variations of food. Another evolutionary contribution was the advent of fire, which made plant and animal products more accessible. This added to the instilled procedural memory of food preparation.

Much like the Theory of Mind, Theory of Food has adapted over time. Allen credited the endless abundance of “button-pushing foods” such as fats, sugar and salt, as well as pre-packaged food, to the stunted maturity of Theory of Food. A de-emphasis on social and ritual aspects of food has also become a contributing factor to the underdevelopment of the theory.  

“While we have food for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Allen said, “there are not holidays that primarily celebrate certain foods.”     

Allen suggested a need to maintain an active interest in food to promote successful aging, similar to maintaining muscle tone or social engagement.   

“Nursing homes have game rooms and TV rooms, but an open kitchen with choices could do a lot of good. Just like crosswords or Sudoku keep the brain active, it’s important to recognize food,” he said.

Allen said that choosing a diet is trying to undo something that is cognitively deep. Allen loosely compared it to learning a second language. However, when gaining a second language, it is not likely one will completely abandon old habits the way a new diet demands.

“It’s not simply a matter of changing eating habits,” he said, “but reworking a web of neural networks encompassing multiple cognitive domains.”