Your spoon could make you fatter

FOOD tastes saltier when eaten from a knife, and denser and more expensive from a light plastic spoon, finds a new study on how the appearance of cutlery and crockery can affect perception of a food’s taste. Such perceptions may be tweaked to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food, the researchers said.

Beverages in cold coloured glasses were rated more refreshing and the weight and colour of a plate can alter how dense, salty or sweet food tastes. The report in BioMed Central’s open access journal, Flavour, also says that taste is affected by the color of the cutlery.

In this study*, researchers from the University of Oxford demonstrated that cutlery can also have an impact on how we experience food.

They found that when the weight of the cutlery confirms expectations (e.g. a plastic spoon is light), yoghurt seemed denser and more expensive. When study participants were offered cheese on a knife, spoon, fork or toothpick, the cheese from a knife tasted saltiest.

Colour contrast is also an important factor: white yoghurt when eaten from a white spoon was rated sweeter, more liked, and more expensive than pink-coloured yoghurt. These effects were reversed for yoghurt tasted from a black spoon, which suggests that colour contrast mediates the effects of cutlery on flavour perception.

Multisensory experience

Dr Vanessa Harrar and Prof Charles Spence, who performed this study, explain that food consumption is a multisensory experience.

“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 said.

Even subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears, Dr Harrar added.

“So, when serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the colour 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. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained colour associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.”