The Sound. . . of FOOD

FILIPINOS = FOOD, agree? More often than not, we bond and build relationships over food. Isn’t that the reason why we end up for hours on the dining table? Sometimes, especially when we have balikbayans over, we just wait for the next meal to be served. Time flies when there are so many viands to taste and chismis to catch up with. There’s just no end to this eating craze! As a matter of fact, I remember one of my mom’s friends telling us that we have to find another hobby aside from eating. But what can we do? Eating is so pleasurable, more so if you have family and friends to share them with. That reminds me, Christmas is just around the corner! HO HO HOw timely and delightful to talk about love for food. :D

I don’t know if most of you can relate, but eating has always been a battle I’ve lost to. Being on the heavy side of the scale, I’ve tried controlling myself from eating but it seems like there’s no use escaping – I still give in to my urges. FAIL. Why is food so addicting anyway? Ah, FLAVOR. Yes, flavor. Has it ever occurred to you how we acquire flavor? Is it through the mouth? The smell? Both? Well, here’s a realization: it involves an evaluation by ALL our senses (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Multisensory interactions take place between taste, smell, touch, vision and audio every time we perceive the flavor of food (Auvray & Spense, 2008). No wonder we’re so drawn to food! We literally invest every part of us to perceive it.

The effects of smell, touch, taste and vision when eating are quite obvious. Just look at the episode when contestants of Survivor Philippines munched on exotic bugs. They closed their nose as the chewed, barfed when they ate something that smelled like poop and expressed their disgust as they felt the hairy legs of the insects. In addition, Filipino consumers presented with images and ambiguously named dishes resulted to maximum positive ratings (Mendoza, Montenegro & Vistal, 2008).

You’re probably thinking of the ambiance in restaurants and how giddy or delightful it makes you feel when the music is just right. When you’re out on a date, for example, doesn’t the atmosphere feel more romantic and conducive to drinking wine when you have a stringed quartet playing for you? What about in Filipino restaurants? Doesn’t it give you that festive feel and make you indulge in their buffets when you have a band serenading your table? More importantly, music matching may also be useful for those patients with impaired gustatory functioning (those who encounter problems with tasting food) (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Although there is proof that liking background noise was correlated with liking food, it’s just a correlation – no overall effect was seen (Woods, Poliakoff, Lloyd, Kuenzel, Hodson, Gonda, Batchelor, Dikksterhuis & Thomas, 2010). Not to mention the unique food preferences of each individual. But, more than your appetite for eating, how did music influence your perception of flavor?

Audition on the perception of food usually focused on the textural properties of food - these include properties such as crispiness and staleness (Auvray & Spense, 2008). Furthermore, background noise affected one’s perception of sounds conveyed from eating food: perceived crunchiness is enhanced in a noisy environment or in environments with high frequencies (>2kHz) (Auvray & Spense, 2008; Woods et al, 2010). Alternatively, food tastes crunchier in background noise (Woods et al, 2010). Similar to how we get inspired by people who are unrelated to us, we now know that sound unrelated to eating can enhance our perception of sound-conveyed food. In addition to sound perception, background noise can alter the reported intensity of gustatory food cues by individuals, namely sweetness, saltiness, bitterness and sourness (Crisinel & Spence, 2008; Woods, et al 2010). While one suggests that these alterations don’t bear any effects on the over-all rate of a food’s flavor (Woods, et al 2010), another does (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). In this case, I would like to expound on the latter. Considering how the former sought biased positive associations with their choice of word “flavoursome”, the latter reminds us of the “genius” that lays in us. Regardless of demographics, there exists a stronger association between lower-pitched sounds and visually presented bitter-tasting foodstuffs and higher-pitched sounds and sour-tasting foodstuffs (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Unlike the previous studies, Crisinel & Spence (2008) relied on the names of foods alone to come up with their findings. Remember that tastes (bitter and sour most especially) as well as high and low-pitched sounds can signal danger. Just like pain signals, don’t you feel thankful that you already have these automatic screening mechanisms for what to eat and what not to eat?

That said, don’t be surprised if cookbooks started adding songs to their list of ingredients. We’ve given so much attention to making dishes look presentable, why don’t we enhance it with some feel good music as well? We are what we eat. So if you eat food that you especially like (thanks to all our senses), good for you!

References:

Auvray, M. & Spense, C. (2008). The multisensory perception of flavor. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1016–1031. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.06.005

Crisinel, A. & Spence, C. (2008). Implicit association between basic tastes and pitch. Neuroscience Letters, 464, 39–42. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2009.08.016

Mendoza, K., Montenegro, B. & Vistal, C. (2008). Bistro Kritiquo: An Experimental Research on the Effects of Semantics and Imagery on Consumer Choice. Unpublished Manuscript, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

Woods, A., Poliakoff, E., Lloyd, D., Kuenzel, J., Hodson, R., Gonda, H., Batchelor, J., Dikksterhuis, G., & Thomas, A. (2010). Effect of background noise on food perception. Food Quality and Preference. doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.07.003