Heston Blumenthal left viewers confused after his left-field response on last night’s episode The Project.

For anyone who missed it, when Waleed Aly simply asked: “What makes a great restaurant?”

Heston replied with a rather sensational, if cryptic, diatribe:

“This might seem a little tangential.”

“Human beings became the most powerful species on the planet because through being able to imagine things that don’t exist, we created shared beliefs. So all the things that happened after humans: religion, money, language, cultures, social media, fairy tales, they are very human being.”

“The reason that happened was the brain trebled in size for lots of reasons but primarily through eating cooked food. It broke the food down, and our gut changed, and this [touches head] is on top of our body to protect, because this [touches neck] is where the next generation are prepared for life.”

“And so the thing, we should be called omnivores or herbivores, we’re coctivores … we are interdependent beings,”

“We’ve been able to work collectively in numbers larger than any other creature and our efficiency in group learning has become quicker, quicker, quicker, quicker. We don’t have to climb a mountain to get water every day; we don’t have to kill an animal to the death to feed our children.”

Which is when Aly endeavoured to get the train back on the tracks with:

“That explains why we like restaurants, but how do we tell the good ones from the bad ones?”

Alas, Heston picked that train of thought straight back up and ran with it.

“We have our internal universe, our human being and we have our human doing. We have our feelings and our emotions, and then we have to get on in life … The problem that’s happening is we are confusing the two things. We are thinking that our happiness is going to be developed by a numerical system … thank god we have because that’s what’s got us to where we’ve got to.”

“There’s a palliative care nurse that wrote a piece in The Guardian last year, the most common things, regrets people had while they were passing away and it was they wished they lived a life true to themselves.”

“If every human being had an ambition not to have that feeling, and that’s because our new brain that came from eating cooked food … starts to fade and then our raw emotion comes through, and we realise, actually, this is about emotion. Food is about emotion.”

For those of you who would care to know what he was banging on about. It’s really very simple. Please see translation below:

“Bear with me, gang, I’m going rogue.”

“Human beings are the most powerful creatures on the planet because we imagined King Kong and Godzilla. Really, religion, money and culture are just boring human things compared to King Kong and Godzilla.”

“Humans got mega smart and topped the food chain because we cooked and ate everything that stood in our path. We have good food to thank for our evolution, which has made way for the next generation so that they can enjoy deconstructed lasagne and bacon and egg ice cream.”

“Basically, life is all about cooking. Wagyu, oysters, marinated tempeh, whatever you prefer. Life, humanity, we’re coctivores, which means we all cook food. We are all chefs. The world is just a big kitchen.”

“There are so many humans that no other creatures really stand a chance. Our collective brains gave us running water and supermarkets so with our spare hunting and gathering time we can just create new cooking techniques.”

“We have two universes. We are human beings and human doings, or really, humans eating, or humans washing up. Washing up is just the other side of eating, and it brings up so many emotions. No one likes washing up, but everyone likes eating.”

“I read an article recently about regrets. The most common regret people have when they pass away is not living a life that is true to themselves. I think we need to be true to our appetites. If everyone were true to their appetite and ate all the yummy food, then we would be happier.”

“Food is about emotion. Eat your feelings. Get a dishwasher. Be happier.”