Is Love a Food Ingredient? | Food Scientist & Innovation Leader Cesar Vega on The Science of Cooking

Cesar Vega is the Sr. R&D Director Innovation of McCain Foods. Below is the full transcript of the conversation.

Jarrod Sutton

Hi, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the DIALed IN podcast. I'm Jarrod Sutton with DIAL Ventures. We're a venture studio based at the Purdue Applied Research Institute, focused on bringing digital solutions to the agri-food sector. We do that by engaging with the industry and recruiting tech entrepreneurs into a fellowship program to understand where the needs of our industry are, and getting to work on building novel digital solutions to those challenges.

A big part of our work, of course, is understanding how businesses, how industries, how individuals are thinking about innovation and how they're applying that to their work. I'm very pleased today to be able to have a conversation with Cesar Vega.

Cesar, just a unique background in… Rather than me trying to describe you, I'll let you describe you and then start asking some questions and look forward to a really great conversation. Thanks for being with us today, Cesar. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

‍Cesar Vega

First of all, thanks a lot for the invitation. It's not easy to talk about oneself, but I will give it a try. My name is Cesar Vega, and I'm, let's call it a veteran of the food industry. After 20-plus years, working in the realm of innovation in food, particularly the food industry.

I think that what perhaps makes my profile a little odd, let's put it that way, is that while working in innovation, I have a degree in food science, all the way to post-graduate education, PhD, but I also have a culinary degree, and that is how could I combine my passions in the world of food, and as of late, the last 5–10 years, I've delved also into aspects related to design and understanding how people interact with food, which eventually brought me to where I am today, and I'm sure we're going to be talking about it in a while.

‍Jarrod Sutton

That's fantastic. The culinary piece is really a fascinating one. You go through the science of food, and then you go into the arts of food, the art, and the science. What brought you to culinary school?

‍Cesar Vega

I have a very vivid memories of my childhood that I just wanted to cook. The most evocative of my memories is my mom sautéing onion and me being drawn into the kitchen by the aroma. It smells so good. Then from then on, I just make sure that whenever she put the onion in the pan, I was next to her.

I've always liked that aspect. Always like to cook. I've not always do it well or with edible results, but then as I delve more into it, definitely the question, and the science piece of me starting to wonder, why do foods behave the way they do? While we have a really good understanding in the food industry about how we can create useful and relevant products for consumers, I'm also grew increasingly aware of the fact that many of us at home don't know what's going on.

There are so many myths about the kitchen. To give you a couple of examples very quickly, I remember I learned to make lasagna from an Italian friend, and that was the first time that I knew that you have to put béchamel in a lasagna. She said, "You need to help me to make the béchamel." I knew what béchamel sauce was, but I didn't know it was used in lasagna.

I was making it, mixing it, and then I was mixing in eighths and left to right, counter-clockwise, clockwise, and then she was like, "What are you doing?" "I'm mixing the sauce." "No, no, no, you only mix in one direction. If you're mixing the other direction, it will not be close to what it has to be." I was looking at her. I was doing my PhD, she was doing her masters. "You know that that makes no sense, right?" Anyhow, that's just one example. I'll owe you the other one, but that's what really prompted me to start looking a little closer into what happens at home when you cook.

‍Jarrod Sutton

I love it. You have to do it this way, or it doesn't turn out right, is the message. I understand that completely. Okay. Interestingly, you started your career with Procter & Gamble and I think one of the best innovators in the world in terms of really understanding consumers' needs or the pain points, and then coming up with a solution. They've proven to do that time and time and time again. Tell us about your experience at P&G.

‍Cesar Vega

Definitely, I was very fortunate to start my career with them, and I was rather young. One of the big things for me was their obsession with the consumer journey. I spent the good part of 6 months in Latin America going from door to door only to watch people washing their clothes. How they sort, do they presoak, how do they presoak?

Some of them were making little pastes of detergent and put it in the stains. I'm asking, "Why? Why do you do it that way? Why not this other way?" You have so many biases, right? Let alone that I've never done my laundry. I was only 23 years old, so I was just learning how to do my laundry, but like, "That's not how my mother does it." Do you wash by hand? Do you wash in the washing machine? All those kind of things.

What's the obsession that P&G is? I believe it still has. It's been too many years, but they have a full building with all the washing machines from the different countries in Latin America. They have tanks of water that were specific to the conditions of every country. They had clothes used by real people in the different countries brought into Mexico to wash them, and split in half so that you can have your control, or you can have your competition versus yourself, like with the real thing.

It was so close that it was impossible to have an outcome that was not relevant to the actual consumer. That left me marked. To be honest with you, it's wow. Throughout my 20-plus years of career, I still have to find a similar experience, just with that obsession with the consumer.

‍Jarrod Sutton

The obsession with the consumer. That's such a really important lesson for entrepreneurs, especially, is to understand the pragmatic approach to any industry, but in ours in particular, we talk a lot about agriculture production, obviously food production. You need to understand, walk in their shoes, how they do it, and they do it differently in Indiana than they do in California than they do in North Carolina. That obsession, as you describe, is so powerful.

Then, of course, you really start to discover what we refer to as jobs-to-be-done. What are the pains that they have? What do they need? What are they trying to accomplish? Is there a way to fundamentally help them do that in a different way? Of course, we're thinking about digital innovation, we're thinking about technical solutions, of course, but very same concept. I'm sure as you said, it left a mark that stuck with you as you've gone throughout your career, I'm sure.

‍Cesar Vega

Yeah. It makes you humble too, because as you cited jobs-to-be-done theory, Bob Mustard, who probably you have heard of, he also left me with a big learning. People think that they are the sandwich that people are looking for. It's like you probably are the mustard or the mayo, but that's it. You are just a part of the sandwich. You need to find what part of the sandwich you are and approach it from that direction. We tend to believe that people's lives revolve around what we have to sell. That's definitely not the case.

‍Jarrod Sutton

Yeah, we're just a part of the sandwich, I like that. I hope I'm the meat. I like to talk about the meat in the middle, but who knows? What are you working on today? Tell us about this point in your career. I love this convergence, as you and I have talked and gotten to know one another, about all of your scientific training and background, what you just described with innovation, your passion for food, which is very real, and authentic, and genuine, and contagious, and now your culinary training. How has all that converged into where you're at today and what you're working on now?

‍Cesar Vega

Basically, from a professional perspective, I am leading the innovation agenda for a company called McCain Foods here in the US. Trying to make impact on their growth agenda, but also focusing strongly in developing human capabilities in the realm of innovation and innovation management.

Since you mentioned that, I think I also want to disclaim my opinions are my own. But then I also have found myself in this interesting point in my career where, as I was mentioning, I went from a highly technical view of the world, understanding the mechanisms by which food reacts, zooming out to the world of culinary and the art, and then the intersection of what is the science of cooking.

Then the third element, which again, I had the seed from the Procter & Gamble days, but really came to give fruit in a project at Mars that I was working in India, where I had really the fortune of leading a group of people that our mission was to understand, to be obsessed with consumers. We brought design to life, and that became the other foot of the tripod in which now I see myself, intersection between science and technology of food, the culinary arts, and design.

I stopped reading technical reports, technical articles, and I started reading the humanities of food, the sociology of food, the anthropology of food. All these more human questions, how we relate with food, that were an aha moment for me because like, "Wow, I have actually not seen it like this." How important those unsaid things and contexts actually drive our decisions. People don't stop eating A to eat B just like this. It takes time and adoption and adaption, etc.

Through these reflections, I'm sure you have watched the movie Ratatouille.

‍Jarrod Sutton

Yes.

‍Cesar Vega

There is this very specific moment where Anton eats the dish, and it takes him back home. I was like, "I want to understand that." So I started a project with a small group of people, scientists, academics, and we revolve around the idea, the Ratatouille effect. We wanted to understand the Ratatouille effect. Then after reading more, and having debates, and sending grant requests that were denied, we learned, "No, this is not the way we should be thinking." Especially because we were naive enough to not see that the Ratatouille effect is all about nostalgia, and nostalgia has been relatively well understood.

We left it alone, and we came back a year later, and it's been almost 2 years since that year later. The approach completely changed. We were looking at this from the bigger question of is love a food ingredient on the non-nutritional contributions of food to well-being. Right now, the narrative is that well-being is driven by nutrition. I'm not saying that it's not, it's an element, but there is a lot of human emotion and meaning embedded in food that we are just not looking at it closer. That's what I'm doing at the moment.

We are a group of eight. We have a sociologist, a psychologist, a historian, a designer, and two food scientists in the team looking at it very closely. We got an anonymous donor believing in the project. We have little money, we're looking for more, and we are about running the neuroscience experiments to start looking into… We are doing proof of concept experiments to start elucidating the bigger approach.

We have a survey that we can share with you and your network if you're curious to know if you believe that love is a food ingredient. There are certain questions there that are really interesting. Between the psychologist and the sociologist, they made questions that are like, "Wait a minute, I haven't thought about it like that."

‍Jarrod Sutton

It's a different spin on food as health. Sorry to interrupt you, but as I'm thinking about this as you're talking, it's such a cool concept, Cesar. I love the fact that you've brought these diverse perspectives together to think about it holistically, because myself, all of our listeners, are going to that place like you just described, where the onions are in the pan and that evokes that crystal-clear memory that has such an impact on your life, and food brings people together and cultures, as you've talked about.

How does food as health fit into this when you think about the nutritional benefits? But this is a whole other space that is really about wellbeing, I think is how you said it, and I like the way you said it. How do those two come together, or do they need to be looked at separately?

‍Cesar Vega

No, I think they're an integral part of one. It's just that I think my personal opinion, again, there is an imbalance in the way that we have to pay attention to the other element. Again, the vision, the dream is imagine. Just imagine that we start creating evidence that makes us think twice about the notion.

There is no evidence that love is a food ingredient, but everybody that I speak to says, "Yes, of course it is." It's like, "Okay, so if everybody believes it, must it be true?" The scientist of me says, "No, let's put evidence," and if we can provide that evidence, I imagine an article in Nature or in Science where there are 200 people, coauthors of a global approach to say, "Yeah, we all believe this is true. This is absolutely true."

The fundamental change that this will have in the way we cook at home, how often we cook at home, because we know we have evidence that it's taking care of others and that they feel it, and they're better for it. If we can do it with local ingredients or sustainably grown ingredients, even better. Double whammy. Who would say no to that?

‍Jarrod Sutton

Not me. I love it. Then, if I put my innovation hat back on, that creates all kinds of opportunities and spaces to explore for the development of either platforms to connect people or new product development, as you just described, new tools to empower people to learn how to do these things that perhaps tie them closer to their culture, to their family, to life experiences, I'm sure. How do you apply that scientific innovation, concept, and design thinking to something, as you're describing, with love as an ingredient?

‍Cesar Vega

I think that one of the avenues of impact that we are envisioning is exactly how do we incentivize the industry in general, in particularly the food industry, but how do we incentivize them to see that it is relevant for consumers to have foods in which they have to get involved in the making, like the touch, the human touch, foods designed for human touch?

As opposed to the relevant convenience that we need, but that is not over-indexed. We're over-indexing in convenience. People don't say it, but they need the interaction, they need the sense of accomplishment. The cook also gains a lot from this. This dichotomy of if you cannot grill, if you cannot poach, if you cannot bake, you cannot cook. That's an absolute lie.

There are so many ways in which you can put your hands in the dough. You want to cook from scratch? Amazing. If you want a little help because I cannot make the pie dough because it always breaks on me, it always shrinks on the pie mold. That's frustrating. Those are recipes for anxiety, and those are the most dangerous.

You want somebody not to cook? Make a pie dough. I don't want to do this again. No, let's help them. To me, in my previous lives, I also wanted to start a company for options in plant-based. The name that we put in the company that never came to life was Meat Me in the Middle. It was a play on words. Meat me in the Middle. Because asking a person that is used to eat meat on a regular basis to just stop eating meat, it's like, "No."

It was like what is the nicotine patch for the meat eater? How do you win people off meat in gradual steps? I'm surprised that it hasn't caught up as much. There are a few things out there in the market, but you see more in social media the realization like, "Wait a minute, maybe we mix them together, it will be easier for people to move." I found that out 10–15 years ago. But hell, it's like, "Why didn't you do anything about it?" That's for another episode. I hope I'm answering your question. Not diverging too much.

‍Jarrod Sutton

Yeah. This is fantastic. Great conversation. I'm reminded of, or I'm thinking about farming and the similarities in terms of its ability to touch physical things. It's a physical goods industry that we're in. If I go all the way upstream, farmers are in the business of planting seeds, and with Mother Nature's cooperation, producing a crop and harvesting that crop, physically turning it into ingredients that then go into the hands of the cooks, who can obviously make that into a consumable food product.

If our farmers are listening, they're going to feel that very same emotion in terms of the vested interest in managing and caring for that crop and producing that crop with a great sense of pride once harvest comes in again with weather cooperating. I live in North Central Indiana, and our crop looks to be pretty good this year, and it's a really good feeling when things turn out very positively.

Now it's about demand. When you create that linkage from the food, the commodity crops now, to the ingredients that turn into food products, there's a lot of similarities here in terms of how the farmer is thinking about its raw commodity goods and how you're describing maybe a desired future state for what some people have of affinity for food. Is that fair?

‍Cesar Vega

Yeah, definitely it's fair. Again, it's so convoluted. All these aspects are so convoluted that it's difficult to pull them apart. Just like going to the supermarket for a bag of potatoes. Go for a bag of potatoes, I have the privilege of not looking necessarily at prices, but I'm guessing it's $5. Let's just say $5.

But again, somebody cared to plant, cultivate, and harvest, etc., and livelihoods are at stake for those crops, that we even debated in the team. Also, those farmers put meaning. There is meaning in the crop. How can we connect the whole ecosystem into one narrative?

‍Jarrod Sutton

Cesar, I just want to say thank you. What a fascinating conversation. The topic of food and the ingredient of love is, I think, resonates with everybody, certainly every single one of our listeners. I'm excited to follow along on your journey. How can we do that? How can we find you? How can our listeners follow along as you explore this space?

‍Cesar Vega

Great question. I think we are in the process of creating our landing page where you can see the foundational knowledge and hypothesis we have. I will be sure that I come back to you and share it with you, and then you can distribute it to your network. Also, I would expect that by end of calendar, we will have the results of our first neuroscience experiment, if you and your audience are interested in knowing what's going on. We can definitely also share in some way.

The big ambition is to have this first experiment cementing the work for a program. Then even an institute. At the end, it's like, can we create the institute for love as a food ingredient that we don't know how to call it? The whole enterprise at the moment is called Teaspoon of Love.

‍Jarrod Sutton

Teaspoon of Love, I love it. We're with the Purdue Applied Research Institute at DIAL Ventures. Perhaps there would be some collaboration opportunities, but for sure, thank you for the invitation, we'll take you up on it. We'll schedule another call and listen to the results and have a conversation on that. It's been a pleasure, Cesar. Thank you for the time. Thanks for joining us today.

‍Cesar Vega

Again, I welcome the opportunity. Thank you for listening. I will definitely be happy to explore any further collaboration opportunities within this space.

‍Jarrod Sutton

Excellent. We will do it. Thank you very much, Cesar.

‍Cesar Vega

You're very welcome, Jarrod.