This is won’t shock too many cooks, and probably not that
many easters: presentation matters, by which I mean that how food is presented
has a lot to do with what we think of it and in the end, how much of it we eat.
In an interesting study, a couple of researchers focussed
their attention on cutlery, you know, knives, spoons, etc to see what effect
different coloured and different sized cutlery had on the sensation of eating
because it matters, it really matters what tools you choose to help you eat,
and they found lots of differences such as for example, white yogurt tasting
better – according to the test subjects – that pink yogurt when both were
served on a white spoon but the reverse was the case when they used a black
spoon.
So you want your kids to eat plain Greek yogurt, which
they should, they really should?
Serve them only with white spoons.
This has much wider implications, however, than simply
getting kids to eat more yogurt.
In the words of the researchers on a press release that
accompanied the story , "How we experience food is a multisensory
experience involving taste, feel of the food in our mouths, aroma, and the
feasting of our eyes. Even before we put food into our mouths our brains have
made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience."
They go on:” So, when serving a dish, one should keep in
mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background
on which it is presented (plate or cutlery) and, therefore, tastes different.
This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or
how much salt is added to food."
