Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining our show today. I was so excited to talk to you today. I am a foodie, but beyond you being the food science expert, you've been through some really interesting life experiences. Now I'm going to hit you right with a hard question right off the shelf.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: You went through an incredibly challenging experience.
This was during your PhD program at Stanford University?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Humbly. May I ask that you share that experience?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is after I came back from walking about 2000 miles, my journey to sort of like reset my brain. But essentially I came to the campus and I was accepted into two different graduate programs, which was, in hindsight, probably not the best idea to do. But, you know, I'm such a.
I was such a go getter back then. But, yeah, I think I really lost a lot of my direction, especially because I'd learned so much about myself during the walk, all these things outside of the classroom, outside of academia. And I, you know, and I was really struggling because the year before, my dad had passed away. And that was part of the reason for my walk. My journey was to sort of commemorate him.
And, you know, I was, I was in the classrooms and, you know, obviously it was very challenging and I really didn't set myself up for success. And, you know, combining the mounting pressures and realizing that my passion wasn't in this field any longer. Between chemistry and medicine, I really did struggle with where to go with that. So eventually, at some point, I said, you know, I can't keep it together. And I had a nervous breakdown and I, I checked myself into a psychiatric ward at Stanford University, Stanford Hospital. And, yeah, that was a humbling experience. Certainly. I never thought that would ever happen to me.
But I realized that's what I needed at that time. And I spent three weeks there basically just reevaluating what I needed from myself and from where I was in my life journey. And I decided that afterwards I would never, never do that again to myself. So no matter what, whether the opportunity was something that was incredible, amazing, I had to check in with myself and say, is this what I can do right now? Am I capable of this? And do I have the resources to accomplish this?
And so I gave myself a six month break before going back to school. I went to a different program. And during that time is where I actually started falling in love with food. And this is sort of how I kind of detoured into food science, where I, you know, as I was basically very, very depressed sitting on a couch, you know, it was such a, it was it was really unfortunate, but it gave me the time to say, you know what, maybe this is, this is something I need to do. This is, this is the time of my life where I'm at my lowest point and everything else above that is going to be better. So, you know, let's, let's move on. Let's move forward. And I did.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: I appreciate that, Brian. I, you know, let me first just send a lot of love and I support. It's not easy. And I think each of us and many of our audience go through difficult times in life and it's incredibly inspiring to hear stories where people have overcome their personal adversity. So let me just say thank you for your honesty and vulnerability and sharing the story with the audience.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Thank you. Ari.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: You've overcome this tremendous adversity, death and really losing yourself.
And before that, you said you went on a, on a 2000 miles journey. What was that about? How did you get to that decision?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: My dad was sort of my guiding post. He was such a scholar, he was a physician. And I always thought of him as someone to admire in terms of his intelligence and his ability to, to care people as a doctor. But when he passed away in 2010, he passed away from a stroke. I just thought, wow, like, even, even this person who's supposed to be having such a deep knowledge of medicine and health, he couldn't even save himself. And that really struck me. And there were so many things in his life that I'm sure that he never got. And I said to myself, like, I would never put myself in that position. And so I always had this dream and this thought of like, maybe I just need to do something where I go on a journey. And, yeah, during my graduation ceremony, I said, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk across the country. So I basically sealed my fate in a lot of ways. I said, I better do this. I can't really just, you know, talk, talk the talk. I have to walk the walk, so to speak. And so I set off and, you know, I started in California and I had this plan of like, I'm not, I'm not even going to bring any money because there was this idea of I really wanted to know, like, what, what are, what's like the core values of humanity. Like, are people really good? Like, and I wanted to see that for myself and had all these stories that I read about monks who would walk and they had no money and they would, you know, just trust in sort of whatever life was, was throwing at them. I said, I'll do that. Let's see. Let's experiment. And I did that for six months.
You know, I walked those 2000 miles. I didn't quite get across the whole country, but I did land myself in Louisiana.
Just no money. It was such a wild experience. People would literally stop their cardinal and then give me money. And it was inexplicable. I don't know, like there. I don't know what happened there. But, like, people would come up to me, they would talk to me, they would give me food, they'd give me water.
And I'm a very unassuming guy. I don't think I was telegraphing necessarily that I was doing this, but it just felt like I was being taken care of in a. In a much bigger sense, in a much bigger way than, you know, it was just me, right? It wasn't just me. It was a relationship with the world around me. And people would share stories about their lost loved ones. And it was so inspiring to learn the sort of vulnerabilities that people go through, just everyday people.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Is there a specific story through this journey of yours that you especially remember?
[00:07:40] Speaker B: I was walking, I believe, in New Mexico, and there was a. It was a shrine, I think it was a catholic shrine of sort that was on the side of the road. It was just a very small, unassuming hut. And then two women actually drove their vehicle next to the shrine and came out and asked me, like, what? What am I doing?
And I told them my story and what was going on. And they were so, they were so inspired by it. And one of the women said, you know, if you make it to, if you make it to Austin, Texas, let me know because I'll let you stay at our place. And I didn't think much of it right. So Texas is a very large state. So between New Mexico and Austin is at least two months of walking.
I think it's about 800, 800 or 700 miles. So it was a big chunk of that journey. But I didn't make it. I did get there and I arrived at a spot and she said, you made it to Austin. Let me pick you up and take you to our ranch. And it turned out she was married to some oil and gas tycoon. And their mansion was incredible.
I had such an amazing time there, and it was just so. It's such a random interaction and experience to connect with people that I would never connect with in real life.
And there was just, they had such a remarkable life and story that they shared with me. And I just thought wow. Like, nowhere in ordinary life would I ever have this experience, and they let me stay there.
It was very incredible to what the universe can kind of bring to you.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: You went through this transformative experience after dealing with or while dealing with grief, but then you had thoughts of suicide, which then led to what created that breakage point. After going through this transformative experience, walking.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Across the country, I think my perspective and my mindset was so different from what I, a, had been used to, and then, b, what I was entering into.
Certainly there's the academic pressure itself, but I also thought that, you know, where I was in sort of my emotional state, I was so open to everything. I think the walk itself had kind of broken me open and made me extremely vulnerable, and it allowed me to have those connections that I spoke of. But at the same time, when you're talking about a very competitive environment, you're talking about a space where people are really looking to be number one. You have all these smart, wonderful people, but at the same time, it is a space where people are trying to, you know, achieve something over others. Right? So there's that competitive aspect. And I had forgotten. I'd really forgotten that I had sort of washed myself of that. And I realized how. How different I'd become and how I didn't have the same sort of boundaries or separation that I used to, where my guard was up. And I would think, like, okay, it's all about me. It's all about, like, winning. I'd forgotten how to do that. It was like a muscle I lost. And now I was in a mindset of thinking more collaboratively and compassionately. And I was so open about what I'd gone through, and I think a lot of people didn't understand that. And there was a lot of miscommunication, and I felt very lonely because of that.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing that. I deeply, deeply appreciate your vulnerability. It's no easy task. And doing so publicly, you restarted your academic journey.
What happened next?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: I found a research journal about flavor chemistry, and I had never heard of food science. I didn't know that food science was a field, a study, a discipline. I just thought. I just assumed that, okay, well, someone's making food, right? But I have no idea who is.
But I was so fascinated by the idea of, wow, there are people who are able to take their chemistry knowledge and their biology knowledge, which I had quite a bit of, and translated into something that we all experience, we all have a connection to. And I think that was part of that feeling of that drive in me was I wanted to connect. I wanted a way for whether the medium was food or if it was just talking with people, there is this need to sort of have that relationship. And to that point, during that time, I also met my future wife, and I have this great story where. So I'm vietnamese, and she's romanian, israeli, so our foods are diametrically opposed.
But she decided to invite me on one of our first dates to a vietnamese restaurant. And I thought, okay, like, what does this person know about.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: She's brave.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Very brave. She's a brave person.
She said, you know, I trust that this is going to be delicious. And so I was very hesitant, but of course, I was curious, and I decided to go with her. And she took me to a bit of a hole in the wall, and I thought, 50 50, this can be. This doesn't go either way. Then I ordered a bowl of pho, which is vietnamese chicken soup, and I tasted it, and I said to her, this tastes exactly like the way that my mom would make it.
And then she goes, she has a little bit of a salad, a noodle salad, and she asked the waiter, like, oh, can I have more fish sauce? And I just thought, I've never heard of someone who's not vietnamese or even asian that would want more fish sauce. And I just thought, I think I have to marry this girl, because there's no where in the world would I find someone who is not vietnamese, who, like, just knows that cuisine. And I just. I knew. I knew it was meant to be, and I did, in fact, marry her. So. And we are very much, very much together, and our love of food has never been stronger. And I think that's. That's definitely one of those pieces of why food has been such an important part of my life.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: I mean, there's three pivotal aspects of culture and people connecting together. And I would say language is an incredibly important one, but. But food is also. The things that you learn about different cultures through language and food are more, I believe, than anything else because they are somewhat intangible. It's hard to explain them. It's hard to understand them. So I really appreciate that story, and it truly does create connections between people. I appreciate that. So I need to admit, I am quite the foodie, aspiring chef, amateur.
I do a lot of barbecuing, and I even make our own bone broth, which is wonderful, is the basis for pho.
So many questions. Let's get them out one at a time. First of all, searing steaks.
Does that really what does that do, does that seal in the flavor? That's what everybody thinks.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: To me, it makes the flavor. So I wouldn't say that it seals it in, because there's a lot of ways those flavor compounds can be released. But there's a wonderful reaction that happens called the Maillard reaction, and this happens at the surface of steak as it's heated up rapidly. And so the proteins, there's a lot of different compounds, but mostly the proteins, the amino acids and the nucleic acids all react with very minute amounts of sugar that still remains in the meat tissue, and they produce this cornucopia of flavor that you can't find anywhere else. And I love this idea about meat flavor and barbecuing and cooking and roasting, because that is, to me, the very first human technology, which is to say, let's grab this steak, let's grab this piece of meat and throw it over a fire. And we have been doing that forever. And I think of all the things that we could have done, that's what jump started civilization, just being able to do that and say, the ability for our taste buds to detect the most minute compounds, it doesn't exist anywhere else. Animals can't cook insects. There's no other organism that knows how to cook. And to me, that's such a remarkable human trait. That makes us so.
So, you know, that's, that's what makes us who we are.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: So this is a weird one.
I tried this out, and it seemed to me that it actually works okay. Cooking the food, letting it rest. Meat. Right? Chicken, beef. Cooking the food and letting it rest, not at the end. That's the thing, too, but in the middle. Is there any science that supports that? I heard it's something about the redistribution of the liquids or whatever. Is that true, or is that just a thing that has no science behind it?
[00:18:01] Speaker B: No, actually, that makes a lot of sense to me, because certainly when you're cooking, there's a huge differential between the surface of the food and the interior of the food.
That large differential changes the moisture levels. It changes the movement of all the flavor compounds. And so I, and this is, you know, this is just me talking, but I imagine what's happening is that when you let it rest, there's that reabsorption of moisture or redistribution of the moisture, like you said, but also the redistribution of the heat, because it's so critical for the meat to, you know, kind of be brought up to temperature. If you have too high of a differential, you, you're going to get an undercooked steak. Right. So that's going to be a problem. So I love that. And I love that idea.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: I heard that the crunchiness of food is actually not a feeling. It's a sound.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Is that true?
Yeah, definitely. It's like when you crunch something, there's something internal in terms of the vibration that, like, gets conducted into your ear. And it actually has a huge influence on how we perceive flavor and taste. If you don't have that crunch, things can go really flat real fast.
So the combination of umami and savoriness and saltiness and a little bit of acidity, plus that crunch is. That's why we love fried chicken. I love fried chicken. I will like. Anywhere, I'll go. I have to have fried chicken, especially korean fried chicken. There's nothing like it. And that perfect, perfect texture, it's out of this world, for sure.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: I was in China, and I had this meal, which is actually from the west of China, and incredibly spicy. But the spice just was almost like anesthesia. It kind of put my mouth and tongue to sleep, and yet it was this delightful feeling of just joy to eat that fried chicken.
I was just blown away. There are so many types of heat. I never imagined that.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so fascinating because it's not really. We don't even think of it as a taste or flavor. It's almost. It's like a feeling. Right. It's an experience.
You know, certainly there's flavor involved, but, you know, you have, like, your pure heat, which comes from the peppers, which is capsaicin, and there's so many different varieties of capsaicin. There's different variations on capsaicin. Capsaicin and the spiciness. The, like, pure heat comes from that, where you're very familiar with. And then you have things like black pepper. Right. Which is quite. It's a little more piquant. It's got, like, a bit of a bite to it. It doesn't quite last as long. It doesn't linger. But it's. There's something about that that. That plays a different. It changes the way that your sensations are experienced.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: It.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: It corresponds. It's the same receptor. This is really interesting because capsaicin is really oily. So it kind of sits in the receptor for a while, and it's really hard to get rid of. That's why you have to. If you're trying to drink water, you can't because it's oil. Right. They don't mix, so it doesn't dissolve. So you need something that has fat in it. So it's probably better to rinse your mouth with olive oil than water.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Is milk a thing? Does milk work?
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Milk is a thing. It's gotta be whole milk.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Okay, there you go.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: You can't do too much with 2%, I have to say. My experience.
But, you know, with the black pepper, the compound is called piperine, and it sits. It's kind of like a key that sits in the lock. Same deal, but it's water soluble. So it only sits in the lock for brief second, and then it collapses and goes and disappears. Goes into your esophagus, and so on and so forth.
With that sort of white pepper experience that you're talking about with chinese cuisine now. You're talking about a whole collection of water soluble, you know, spice like molecules because of the way that's fermented. It's fermented a little different. There's not as much of a process as it is with black pepper. So you actually have a lot of the compounds that are original to the pepper plant itself, the peppercorn plant, and those just create that zing that changes how you feel.
It's weird. The numbing sensation. I had a cracker the other day that came from China, and it was covered in that white pepper, and I just thought, what am I feeling? Like? I've never. What a strange sensation, because there's really nothing like it.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I was eating this fish, and it was in a tibetan monastery in northern China, and they kind of prepared this meal, and you will order it way in advance. And my friend and I are like, this is something here is really spicy. So we're starting to figure out what it is. There's all these peppers in it. And we try the peppers, and it's like, it's not the peppers. And then we see this green, round bowl, which I later found out is called, and keep me honest here, it's called peppercorn.
And I look at this, and I'm like, there's no way in hell that this little thing is creating so much grief. And I think I just touched it with my tongue.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: And the burning sensation that lasted for hours was incredible.
Is that black pepper, white pepper, what is that?
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's like. That's like pre black pepper. That's, like pre white pepper. That's, like, the essential, you know, the first step of creating, you know, those peppers. But now you've. You've done nothing to it. You've done no fermentation. You've done no. No heat process. So it has everything in it, and it's ready to go, right? It's chock full of these compounds that cause these sensations, and, you know, they're all very powerful. So that's really it. That's. That's an incredible, incredible experience. I'd love to try that, for sure.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: When I was later, we lost our bike, and this chinese lady helped us find our bike. Actually, after hours, they took it away. Anyway, she helped us through this whole crisis. We didn't want to lose the money on the bike. And I'm like, okay. At the end of this, we're like, let us say thank you. So we invited her and her monk friend to a meal. My friend and I paid for it. And we're eating this again, this delicious fish. And now she warns us, right? And she's like, oh, you need to be very careful to take these green peppers out of the fish in order to kind of. You don't want to. You don't want to bite onto them. Incredibly dangerous. But it's interesting because those green peppers, you know, are truly raw, unadulterated pepper in all its glory.
Definitely a unique experience.
You have actually written a book about the science behind food.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Yeah. This is a very interesting story for myself because the title of the book is 150 food science questions answered, and you can find it on Amazon or any of your independent booksellers online. But I love this because it kind of shows you the power of thought in a lot of ways.
So after I returned back to school, graduate school, I actually. This is such a sad experience, but basically, my advisor's son, actually, he committed suicide. Right. And it was such a weird experience to know. Like, I had just gone through something like that where I was at the precipice, and then someone did actually go through that, and then that created a huge cascade through my program in the sense that now I was really left alone to my own devices. And so around the second or third year, I decided, you know, maybe I'm not cut out to do the research part, but I still love the food science, so maybe I'll start writing. And the reason for that was because I needed to do something where I could volunteer my time and I couldn't leave my computer. And I thought, I'll just pitch some stories and find an outlet for that. And I really got into that. I really enjoyed that. I found a lot of different blogs, and I was writing on medium, and I was getting some traction, and I thought, wow, I've never thought of myself as a writer.
I think I failed my AP exam in English in high school.
That was not my skillset, let me tell you. But something changed, and I really started to understand the value of communication in writing. And I have this knowledge, but at the same time, sharing it with people is really, it's a different feeling and experience. And I loved it because you kind of get that immediate feedback, which is very different from research. You spend two, three years and you basically, you can end up with nothing at the end of the day. But with writing, you get to see people comment and read and give you some feedback almost immediately. So I was doing that, and for the next two to three years, I just started amassing sort of like, these media exposures. I was writing on this blog that was part of a professional society involving food science, and I got the opportunity to actually manage it. So I was playing around with the website. I was learning search engine optimization. I was just having a lot of fun, right? This is all just volunteer work. And it was so exciting because I could see the numbers, and I love playing with graphs. I was just kind of geeking out. And at some point, somehow, all that, there is a response from the world in the form of a publisher that reached out to me and said, we would like you to write a book on food science. And I was just thinking, what the heck? Because I have these goals that I read to myself every day, and one of them was like, I would like to write a book on food science. And I was just, like, boggled by that because I was thinking, like, maybe like ten years down the line when I really established in my career. But this ended up being an opportunity that showed up right in the middle of me writing my dissertation. This is my final year in graduate school.
And my wife gave me the blessing and said, you know, if you have to write in the middle of the night and write your dissertation during the day, I think you should do it because you'll never get another chance to do something like this. And it was such a huge bucket list item. And I was, you know, basically my every, all my free time was spent writing the book. And I got some prompts. It was really great. They gave me a template, and they gave me a lot of the questions, but a lot of them, I had to come up with my own.
And I was searching. I was reading about what people were interested in and what questions were really like at the tip of their tongue, and I just poured, I poured myself into that and I just thought, this is what I love. And then the pandemic happened. This is 2020. So I finished my first draft, and the pandemic came, and I just thought, oh, my gosh, is this even going to get published? I worked so hard on it, but luckily, like, they. They managed to bring it out into the world. I even. They even had me draw my own illustrations, which I thought was really funny because I'm not an artist either.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: If you think that I'm not. I failed English. Like, don't even talk to me about art. Like, I never set foot in that. But I did. I did write my own or draw my own illustrations, and that got published in the book, too. So it definitely felt like I was putting. Being put on the spot as far as, like, creative skills. But, yeah, it ended up getting published in July 2020, and in the next. The next month, I defended my dissertation. And so it was such a wild, wild one.
Seven months of just getting it all together.
But I passed. I finally got my degree, and I had this book in hand, and I just thought, wow, like, what else can I do?
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Brian, I am so inspired. You are. I'll give you the highest form of compliment, I think, that I can give, and it's that you are living and have lived a life worth living.
And that's such an inspiration to me and to our audience.
Sure, you got lucky, you know, here and there, but you've also made some very intentional choices to put yourself out in the world and own your destiny, which I think is absolutely beautiful.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: I have a very personal question.
What would you tell? What would you advise 20 year old Brian?
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Wow.
Your failures are the beginning of a journey of success.
Yeah.
I am so grateful for learning very early on that the times in my life where I felt the lowest, the times where I felt stuck or challenged or scared, was really. It became a point where I could make a decision where I could.
And it's not. It may not be as dramatic as this is the choice between life and death, but it is almost like saying, either I will not give up, or I will give up.
And sometimes it's okay. I actually think there were many moments where saying I give up was actually a way for a blossoming of another period of my life where there could be success. It made room for success. But I feel like any time where I felt so low and I felt, yeah, like I couldn't make it. I couldn't make one more step. I keep thinking back, like, but it's okay. It's okay if it's just one step.
I think just saying that to myself, even if everything looked like it was awry or like things weren't working the same way, or I'd lost a bunch of money, something like that. You know, I could always make one more step. And I'm grateful for that lesson, because the things that I experience now, the things that, the risks I have taken, nothing is comparable to that walk. But certainly it gives me that inspiration to say, like, you know what? What's the worst that can happen?
What's really behind my fear? Is it real? Can I really say that what I'm scared of is factual? And even if it is, what's the worst that can happen? And certainly I have this story where there is. I got a message on LinkedIn, and it was a potential client.
So this is fairly recently. It was about two years ago. And the guy asked me, like, do you want to go to Mexico?
I thought, sure, I guess. And he says, this will be the best story, if not the best project you'll ever have this year. That's what he guaranteed me. I don't know who you are.
I guess I will take you up on that.
I actually did decide to go, and I flew down to Mexico into a part. I've never been to Guadalajara. And I got there. I got to the hotel, and they said, let's have you meet someone. And it turned out to be an Emmy award winning actress that I can't name, unfortunately. But I was so shocked that that was who I was meeting. And it was not a catfish scenario. It was not a scam. I was not going to inadvertently donate my organs.
My wife certainly thought that would happen, but it actually ended up being such a wonderful experience. And I got to learn from someone that was a master at her craft, and I got to support her in developing this product brand. And it was just like, who in their right mind would have made that risk? But I just thought, why not?
And I've certainly gone the other way, whereas there's been a lot of risk, and it hasn't worked out. But I'm glad, glad I did it, because I learned so much.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: You know, one of our prior guests who said yes to one of those propositions ended up joining a cult.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Sometimes we make decisions they're stupid, we end up regretting them. Sometimes we make decisions that are objectively stupid, but we end up appreciating them and holding them dear.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: But there is an element of taking, I would say a little bit of risk or sometimes a lot. And then, you know, sometimes it turns out. Well, sometimes it turns out bad, but it's. It's led a lot of our guests to live a life worth living.
But, you know, I don't want to caution, I don't want to advise any of our guests in our listeners to do anything stupid or dangerous.
So it's a, it's a difficult, it's a difficult path to thread. So I'll say thank you, Brian. And you are young and you have, I am sure, an amazing journey in front of you. So, you know, we definitely need to have you back and listen to your new and exciting stories as you progress through your journey.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time, Ari. It's been a pleasure being able to share these with you, these stories, and I definitely look forward to the next time around.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Thank you, Brian.
