Chewing loudly at the dinner table can help you lose weight, according to new research.
A new study, conducted at Brigham Young University and Colorado State University, revealed that the noise food makes during chewing sessions can significantly influence the amount of food an individual eats.
Researchers note that the "Crunch Effect" only helps limit food consumption when people are conscious of the sounds they're making while eating. In light of the latest findings, researchers suggest that limiting the use of music, music and television and concentrating on the chewing, chomping, crunching sounds of mastication can help dieters eat less.
"For the most part, consumers and researchers have overlooked food sound as an important sensory cue in the eating experience," said study author Gina Mohr, an assistant professor of marketing at Colorado State University.
"Sound is typically labeled as the forgotten food sense," added co-study author Ryan Elder, assistant professor of marketing at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management. "But if people are more focused on the sound the food makes, it could reduce consumption."
The latest study involved three different experiments that examined how "food sound salience" influenced rating behavior. According to researchers, all three studies revealed that negative correlations between the intensity of food noise and food intake.
"Across three studies, we show a consistent negative relationship between the salience of a food's sound and food intake. Our research highlights the importance of intrinsic auditory food cues on consumption. Our findings are valuable to both researchers interested in understanding how sensory cues are connected to consumption and marketers utilizing sound in their communications to consumers," researchers wrote in the study.
One experiment revealed that participants who couldn't hear their own chewing ate one and a half times more pretzels than participants who could hear everything.
"When you mask the sound of consumption, like when you watch TV while eating, you take away one of those senses and it may cause you to eat more than you would normally," Elder said. "The effects many not seem huge - one less pretzel - but over the course of a week, month, or year, it could really add up."
The findings are published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.
