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 They tested the same meals presented differently to
diners in a fine restaurant, and the foods seemed to taste better to
participants when arranged in a creative pattern.
"I'm very happy that chefs are now looking at things like this,
because people eat out more and more, so to have chefs being aware
that what they do may have a long lasting effect on people's food
choices is a good thing," lead study author Debra Zellner told
Reuters Health.
Zellner is a researcher and professor in the psychology department
at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
In previous studies, she's found that people were "turned on" by
neatness and balance in the plating of food, but she wanted to see
if stepping up the presentation to a professional level would make a
difference, so she contacted the Culinary Institute of America in
Hyde Park, New York, to invite them to collaborate.
"Chefs have all these ideas of what they should be doing and how
they should be doing it — and they believe it matters to the
consumer — but there's no data," Zellner said. "So, they were really
interested in doing something."
A total of 91 diners were recruited to the Culinary Institute of
America restaurant to eat a meal on one of two nights. There were 35
men and 56 women ranging in age from 20 to 74. The participants had
a variety of occupations, but none worked in kitchens.
"There were all sorts of people; it was really a nice sample," Zellner said.
The diners were all served the same foods each night — sauteed
chicken breast, brown rice pilaf and string beans with almonds, but
the meal was plated two different ways. One night, the meals were
the traditional way — with the sautéed chicken and sauce on the
bottom half of the plate, rice pilaf in a mound in one upper
quadrant and the green beans in the other upper quadrant.
Participants who arrived on the other night were served a fancier
version of the meal, with the three foods in a spiraling pattern
with the sauce drizzled around the perimeter of the plate.
On both nights, the participants filled out questionnaires before
and after the meals, rated the foods for appearance and likeability,
and were offered the chance to leave any open-ended comments.
The participants who received the more attractive presentation rated
their liking for the foods overall as higher than those served the
traditional meals, Zellner's team reports in the journal Appetite.
"We found that participants rated the two platings differently in
attractiveness, but they didn't rate them differently for neatness,"
Zellner said. "This was crucial because of what we had found
previously. The two presentations were equally neat and equally
balanced."
When asked about the specific foods, the participants who were
served the attractively plated meals gave higher ratings to the
chicken and the brown rice, but there was no difference in rating
for the green beans.
The brown rice pilaf garnered the most open-ended comments, with
many more positive than negative.
Zellner said the results were encouraging, because the Culinary
Institute of America is interested in promoting healthy food.
"Trying to get people to eat brown rice, as opposed to white rice,
is a struggle sometimes," she said, "So it's encouraging that if
presented in a very attractive way, you might get people to eat
things they normally wouldn't, and that are actually healthy."
Lauren Graf, a clinical dietitian at Montefiore Medical Center in
New York, was not involved in the study but wasn't surprised that
the level of attractiveness and amount of care that went into food
preparation influenced people's perception of flavor.
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One reason the food may have been perceived as tasting better is
because it came from a more expensive restaurant, she noted.
Graf said that people can improve the appearance of foods at home,
too.
"You don't need to spend a ton of money on something to get it to
look or taste good at home," she said. "Foods can look nice in an
economical way — and can make you feel like it's fancier than it
really is."
"Whoever is making dinner that night can take the time to plate it
out, arrange the vegetables in a nice fashion and use nice plates,"
she said. Parsley can be used as a garnish or fresh herbs can be
added to foods to make them prettier, she added.
Turning on just the right type of music could also help, according
to the authors of another study published in the same issue of the
journal.
"Earlier research has highlighted the influences of specific
musical components such as tempo, volume, and pitch on eating and
shopping behaviors, but little has been known about the effect of
music genre on food perception and acceptability," Han-Seok Seo told
Reuters Health in an email.
Seo, a researcher and professor in the Department of Food Science at
the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, led the study examining
the impact of background music on perceptions of taste.
Seo and his team rearranged one music piece (Air on the G string)
into four different genres: classical, jazz, hip-hop and rock. Each
version was arranged as a solo performance and with multiple
performers.
A total of 99 study participants were seated in individual sensory
booths and given headphones. Each participant listened to either the
solo performances or the group performances of all four genres of
music.
At 45 seconds into each song, the participants were presented with
either chocolate or bell pepper and asked to rate the flavor and
intensity of the food from 0 (extremely unpleasant or weak) to 15
(extremely pleasant) or strong.
Participants liked both foods more while listening to the jazz
version when compared to the hip-hop. Classical music didn't change
the participants' impressions at all.
Seo suggests that food manufacturers and foodservice professionals
could apply his results.
For example, "Based on current findings, chocolate companies may
integrate their chocolate products with jazz-like musical pieces to
magnify consumers' acceptability for the chocolates," he said.
___
Source: http://bit.ly/OWUXzt and
http://bit.ly/1n7daG0
Appetite, online Feb. 12, 2014.
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reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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