A new study suggests that our choice of utensils may affect our perception on the food taste and our consumption of food as well.
Junior researcher Vanessa Harrar and experimental psychologist Charles Spence from the University of Oxford in the U.K teamed up to study if the cutlery may affect the perception of the people before they start eating. It can either make them eat more or eat less. Cutlery is the utensils such as knives, spoons, and forks used for eating or serving food. They wanted to know if the weight, color, shape, and size of the cutlery may affect the taste of the food and the consumption behavior of a person.
There were previous studies that which showed that tableware can affect the taste of a food such as a glass with a blue or green color makes a drink more thirst-quenching.
They conducted several experiments varying the weight, size, shape and color of the cutlery and assessed the impact of the changes on the participants based on the ratings they give to the same food. They chose 35 participants who were not aware that they were served the same food and they have to rate them using the 9-point Likert scales according to sweetness, saltiness, expensiveness, and overall liking of the food taste.
The researchers used yogurt and cheese as subject for food tasting.
Weight, Size and Taste
The researchers served yogurt which the participants had to eat using a teaspoon, tablespoon, and a plastic spoon. They found out that yogurt tastes saltiest when eaten using a plastic spoon and sweetest when eaten using a teaspoon. The participants rated the yogurt served with teaspoon as the most flavorful but perceived to be more expensive when served with a tablespoon. Well, this may be the reason why coffee and desserts taste really sweet since they were often served with small spoons.
The researchers also did a blind test and the results stayed the same.
Color and Taste
The researchers used blue, black, and white spoons for comparison. They also served pink and white yogurt to see if there will be variance. Here they found out that black spoons made both yogurt less sweeter while blue made it salty. This is may be the reason why chips were often packaged in blue.
Shape and Taste
The researchers used young and aged cheese in this study wherein they vary on sharpness. The aged cheese is shaped sharper than the young cheese. The participants were asked to cut the cheese themselves and put it in their mouth directly from the knives. In the experiment, the young cheese was perceived to be less sweet, less likable, and less expensive than the aged cheese.
These experiments concluded that cutlery significantly affects the food taste.
This study was published on the June 26 issue of the journal Flavour.
