Charles Spence is multisensory researcher in London, who has been messing around with how sounds modify flavor. “We’ve shown that if you take something with competing flavors, something like bacon-and-egg ice cream, we were able to change people’s perception of the dominant flavor—is it bacon, or egg?—simply by playing sizzling bacon sounds or farmyard chicken noises.”
This might sound crazy, but the otherworldly ice cream makes one thing clear: The sound of food matters. So does the sound of the packaging and the atmospheric sounds we hear when we’re eating. We’re all synesthesiates when we sit down to dinner. [MORE]
Slimy soy, decomposed shark, and maggot cheese
Food is a marvelous window through which to examine the multifaceted emotion of disgust. Food is a great passion, but it can also inspire terrible repulsion. Strangely, as with almost all facets of disgust, it is in our nature to be attracted to this repulsion. Who, uninitiated to the actual foodstuff, isn't at least a little curious about tasting some soft and stinky hákarl or a wormy morsel of casu marzu?
What human beings find disgusting varies greatly not just from place to place but across time. It cannot be separated from what the object of our repulsion means to us. [MORE ]
A Perk of Our Evolution: Pleasure in Pain of Chilies
Late summer is chili harvest time, when the entire state of New Mexico savors the perfume of roasting chilies, and across the country the delightful, painful fruit of plants of the genus Capsicum are being turned into salsa, hot sauce and grizzly bear repellent. Is "benign masochism" the root of our obsession with hot peppers? [MORE]
But why are Chilli Peppers so hot?
The chemicals that cause the burning sensation in pepper come from a family of compounds called the capsaicinoids, this family all have the same functional groups, only varying by the length of the hydrocarbon chain. Of all the capsaicinoids, only two compounds are responsible for 80-90% content of pepper, these are capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin [MORE].
Research shows some people don't taste salt like others
Those conclusions are important because recent, well-publicized efforts to reduce the salt content in food have left many people struggling to accept fare that simply doesn't taste as good to them as it does to others, pointed out John Hayes, assistant professor of food science, who was lead investigator of the study.
Published in the latest edition of Physiology & Behavior, "Explaining variability in sodium intake through oral sensory phenotype, salt sensation and liking" was a collaboration between Hayes and University of Connecticut professor Valerie Duffy. The research involved 87 carefully screened participants who sampled salty foods such as broth, chips and pretzels, on multiple occasions, spread out over weeks. [MORE]
Listen to the NPR interview here.
Journal Reference:Hayes et al. Explaining variability in sodium intake through oral sensory phenotype, salt sensation and liking. Physiology & Behavior, 2010; 100 (4): 369 DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2010.03.017
To Make Lemons Into Lemonade,Try 'Miracle Fruit'
Berry Turns Sour to Sweet By Altering Taste Buds; A Lure to Scientists
By JOANNA SLATER Wall Street Journal March 30, 2007
ARLINGTON, Va. -- At a party here one recent Friday, Jacob Grier stood on a chair, pulled out a plastic bag full of small berries, and invited everyone to eat one apiece. "Make sure it coats your tongue," he said.
Mr. Grier's guests were about to go under the influence of miracle fruit, a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet. [MORE]
More from the New York Times "A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue" on Miracle Fruit parties.
2010 update: 'Miracle' Tomato Turns Sour Foods Sweet - For the past several years, Japense scientists have been developing bio-production systems to inexpensively churn out loads of miraculin — a natural taste-altering protein that makes sour foods seem oh so sweet. Their newest biotech reactor: grape tomatoes. [MORE]
