Following his example: One designer created a book, equipped with facial recognition software, that would not open until the prospective reader’s face was completely neutral; that is, there was no prejudging going on. See Alison Flood, “The Book That Judges You by the Cover,” Books (blog), Guardian, Feb. 2, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/global/booksblog/2015/feb/02/book-judges-you-by-your-cover-moore-thijs-biersteker.
“the archetype of all taste”: Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge, 1986), 79.
CHAPTER 1
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?
“with such other worthy”: See Paul Rozin, “Preadaptation and the Puzzles and Properties of Pleasure,” in Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Edward Diener, and Norbert Schwarz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 114.
In some experiments: Curt P. Richter, “Experimentally Produced Reactions to Food Poisoning in Wild and Domesticated Rats,” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 56 (1953): 225–39. It should be noted that no one has probably done more to understand rat behavior than Richter. As one account noted, “From 1919 to 1977, Richter conducted a steady stream of research projects on psychobiological phenomena of the rat, including spontaneous activity, biological clocks, physiologic effects of adrenalectomy, self-selection of nutrients, poisoning, stress, and domestication.” See Mark A. Suckow, Steven H. Weisbroth, and Craig L. Franklin, eds., The Laboratory Rat (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 14.
We are particularly alert: See, for example, Léri Morin-Audebrand et al., “The Role of Novelty Detection in Food Memory,” Acta Psychologica 139 (2012): 233–38. As the authors note, “People may spend a long time finding the ten differences between two similar pictures in visual puzzles, but will usually immediately notice the slightest differences in the odor, flavor, and mouthfeel of foods, although they cannot describe them.”
This alarm is most well tuned: As the prominent psychologist Wilhelm Wundt described it, more than a century ago, “gradually substitute for a sweet sensation one of sour or bitter, keeping the intensity constant,” and “it will be observed that, for equal intensities, sour and, more especially, bitter produce a much stronger feeling than sweet.” See Wilhelm Max Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, accessed Oct. 14, 2013, http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wundt/Outlines/sec7.htm.
We start getting really choosy: See, for example, Gillian Harris, “Development of Taste and Food Preferences in Children,” Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care 3, no. 3 (May 2008): 315–19.
Even our desire for salt: B. J. Cowart, G. K. Beauchamp, and J. A. Mennella, “Development of Taste and Smell in the Neonate,” in Fetal and Neonatal Physiology, 3rd ed., vol. 2, ed. R. A. Polin, W. W. Fox, and S. H. Abman (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 2004), 1819–27.
those English burghs with “wich”: This detail comes from Robert P. Erickson, “A Study of the Science of Taste: On the Origins and Influence of the Core Ideas,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2008): 59–105.
Even anencephalic babies: J. E. Steiner, “The Gustofacial Response: Observation on Normal and Anencephalic Newborn Infants,” in Symposium on Oral Sensation and Perception—IV (Development in the Fetus and Infant), ed. J. F. Bosma (Bethesda, Md.: NIH-DHEW, 1973), 254–78.
No one living really dislikes: Another interesting indicator of how much we treasure sweetness is that it seems, at least according to one study, that we can more accurately remember the sweetness of a meal than, say, its texture. See Léri Morin-Audebrand et al., “Different Sensory Aspects of a Food Are Not Remembered with Equal Acuity,” Food Quality and Preference 20 (2009): 92–99.
Cilantro, for some: Nicholas Eriksson et al., “A Genetic Variant near Olfactory Receptor Genes Influences Cilantro Preference,” Flavour 1, no. 22 (2012), accessed Nov. 1, 2013, http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/pdf/2044-7248-1-22.pdf.
The ability of humans: See JinLiang Xue and Gary D. Dial, “Raising Intact Male Pigs for Meat: Detecting and Preventing Boar Taint,” Swine Health and Production 5, no. 4 (1997): 151–58. As a testament to the variety of sensory experiences humans can often have, boar taint, the authors note, has been compared to a huge range of other scents, both good and bad: “The smell and/or taste of boar-tainted meat has been described variously as an ‘off’ or ‘boar’ odor; onion-like, perspiration-like, or urine-like; like perfume, wood, musk, or ‘Ivory’ soap; sweet, fruity, ammonia-like, and animal-like; and fecal or bitter.”
Just because you find: As Jane Wardle and Lucy Cooke write about the famed “supertaster” aversion to the chemical compound known as PROP, “Despite the attractiveness of the idea that variations in taste sensitivities could underlie food dislikes, the weight of the evidence is that PROP taster status has only limited influence on food preferences in everyday life.” See Wardle and Cook, “Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Children’s Food Preferences,” supplement, British Journal of Nutrition 99, no. S1 (2000): S15–S21.
“It is striking”: Martin Yeomans, “Development of Human Learned Flavor Likes and Dislikes,” in Obesity Prevention: The Role of Brain and Society on Individual Behavior, ed. Laurette Dubé et al. (New York: Academic Press, 2010), 164.
Studies show that most of us: See Peter H. Gleick, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water (New York: Island Press, 2010), 81.
Eggplant, after all: See “Plant Guide,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, accessed Nov. 1, 2013, http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/pg_some.pdf.
Then again, tomatoes: And thankfully, as one researcher notes, tomatoes or potatoes or other ilk from the genus Solanum seem unlikely to actually kill us: “Fatalities from solanine poisoning are not well documented in the modern medical literature.” Donald G. Barceloux, “Potatoes, Tomatoes, and Solanine Toxicity (Solanum tuberosum L., Solanum lycopersicum L.),” Disease-a-Month 55, no. 6 (June 2009): 391–402.
She is certainly not: In Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera, we learn that the protagonist Fermina Daza “had despised eggplants ever since she was a little girl, even before she had tasted them, because it always seemed to her that they were the color of poison.” García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (New York: Vintage, 2007), 208. And indeed, Fermina does grow to like eggplants.
“most disliked” vegetable: Japan Today, Sept. 4, 2001, accessed Oct. 14, 2013, http://www.japantoday.com/category/food/view/eggplant-most-hated-vegetable-among-kids.
“People like to be”: Quoted in Harry T. Lawless, Sensory Evaluation of Food (New York: Springer, 2010), 260.
The Cornell University researcher: Brian Wansink and Jeffery Sobal, “Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook,” Environment and Behavior 39, no. 1 (2007): 106–23.
we like the same food less: Brian Wansink et al., “Dining in the Dark: How Uncertainty Influences Food Acceptance in the Absence of Light,” Food Quality and Preference 24, no. 1 (2012): 209–12.
Research has shown: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, “The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips,” Journal of Sensory Studies 19, no. 5 (Oct. 2004): 347–63.
high-frequency “crispiness”: In food “rheology” circles, the word “crispy” is a very specific thing, different from the lower-pitched, longer-lasting sounds of “crunchiness.” Notes one study, “Crispy foods generate high pitched sounds with frequencies higher than 5 kHz, crunchy foods yield low pitched sounds with a characteristic peak on frequency range of 1.25–2 kHz.” See Mayyawadee Saeleaw and Gerhard Schleining, “A Review: Crispness in Dry Foods and Quality Measurements Based on Acoustic–Mechanical Destructive Techniques,” Journal of Food Engineering 105, no. 3 (2011): 387–99.
People have, for example, reported: There are many studies to this effect, but see, for examp
le, Cynthia DuBose et al., “Effects of Colorants and Flavorants on Identification, Perceived Flavor Intensity, and Hedonic Quality of Fruit-Flavored Beverages and Cake,” Journal of Food Science 45 (1980): 1393–99.
When trained panelists: See Lance G. Philips et al., “The Influence of Nonfat Dry Milk on the Sensory Properties, Viscosity, and Color of Lowfat Milks,” Journal of Dairy Science 78, no. 10 (Oct. 1995): 2113–18.
Flipping the switch: This story is reported in Herbert Mieselman and Halliday McFie, Food Acceptance and Consumption (New York: Springer, 1996), 13. The study it refers to is J. Wheatley, “Putting Color into Marketing,” Marketing, Oct. 23–29, 1973, 67.
“In virtually all analyses”: Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014), 51.
In Zellner’s plating study: Curiously, the researchers found that people seemed to feel the same about the string beans, one of the foods on offer, regardless of how they were presented. In a line that resonates with parents everywhere, they write, “There might be something special about vegetables that makes it difficult to change how much people like them.” Debra Zellner et al., “It Tastes as Good as It Looks! The Effect of Food Presentation on Liking for the Flavor of Food,” Appetite 77 (June 2014): 31–35.
“What is the adaptive”: Rozin, “Preadaptation and the Puzzles and Properties of Pleasure,” 16.
“function to promote”: Paul Rozin, J. Haidt, and C. R. McCauley, “Disgust,” in Handbook of Emotions, ed. M. Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 638.
This particular face: See H. A. Chapman et al., “In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust,” Science 323, no. 5918 (2009): 1222–26.
and we use more facial muscles: Tsuyoshi Horio, “EMG Activities of Facial and Chewing Muscles in Human Adults in Response to Taste Stimuli,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 97 (2003): 289–98.
Instances of disgusting behavior: Ibid., 644.
“Choices depend on taste”: W. M. Gorman, “Tastes, Habits, and Choice,” International Economic Review 8, no. 2 (June 1967): 218.
“innately appealing”: See Sam Sifton, “Always Be Crisping,” New York Times, Sept. 13, 2012.
“likely to evoke the sense”: John S. Allen, The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 36.
The more tempting the language: See Esther K. Papies, “Tempting Food Words Activate Eating Simulations,” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00838.
“An item won’t be on”: Tyler Cowen, An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies (New York: Penguin, 2012), 71.
The mere fact of having a menu: See D. Bernstein, M. Ottenfeld, and C. L. Witte, “A Study of Consumer Attitudes Regarding Variability of Menu Offerings in the Context of an Upscale Seafood Restaurant,” Journal of Foodservice Business Research 11, no. 4 (2008): 398–411.
And while the anticipation: Lauren A. Leotti and Mauricio R. Delgado, “The Inherent Reward of Choice,” Psychological Science 22, no. 10 (2011): 1310–18.
“memories are the building blocks”: Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy Wilson, “Prospection: Experiencing the Future,” Science, Sept. 7, 2007, 1351–54. As they note, “Mental simulation is the means by which the brain discovers what it already knows. When faced with decisions about future events, the cortex generates simulations, briefly tricking subcortical systems into believing that those events are unfolding in the present and then taking note of the feelings these systems produce.” It is as if we rehearse in the moment the future pleasure (or displeasure) to come.
“The present is never our end”: Blaise Pascal, The Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869), 194.
When people in one study: Daniel Kahneman and Jackie Snell, “Predicting a Changing Taste: Do People Know What They Will Like?,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 5, no. 3 (Sept. 1992): 187–200.
“The correlation between”: Debra A. Zellner et al., “Conditioned Enhancement of Humans’ Liking for Flavor by Pairing with Sweetness,” Learning and Motivation 14 (1983): 338–50.
We also seem to crave: This has been called “diversification bias.” Daniel Read and George Loewenstein have theorized various reasons why we may be biased toward more variety than we actually want when we make decisions, some involving “bias,” others not. In the latter camp, they note, “people seek variety because they are risk averse and uncertain about their preferences. Choosing variety reduces the likelihood of repeatedly consuming something undesirable.” Variety also helps us find new favorites. But among the “biased” explanations is the idea that people “subjectively shrink the interconsumption interval” when making a choice; for example, when presented with the chance of consuming one’s favorite ice cream every day for a week, the scenario may sound as if that were a lot of ice cream consumption. But a day lasts a long time (and ice cream is pleasant, after all). “Yet satiation is fleeting, and our preferences typically return to their preconsumption level within a short time.” Read and Loewenstein, “Diversification Bias: Explaining the Discrepancy in Variety Seeking Between Combined and Separated Choices,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 1, no. 1 (1995): 34–49.
In one experiment: See E. Robinson, J. Blissett, and S. Higgs, “Changing Memory of Food Enjoyment to Increase Food Liking, Choice, and Intake,” British Journal of Nutrition 108, no. 8 (2012): 1505–10.
Buyer’s remorse: See Yan Zhang, “Buyer’s Remorse: When Evaluation Is Affect-Based Before You Choose but Deliberation-Based Afterwards” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 2009).
Even amnesiacs: Matthew D. Lieberman et al., “Do Amnesics Exhibit Cognitive Dissonance Reduction? The Role of Explicit Memory and Attention in Attitude Change,” Psychological Science, 12, no. 2 (March 2001): 135–40.
The same effect, interestingly: See Geraldine Coppin et al., “I’m No Longer Torn After Choice: How Explicit Choices Implicitly Shape Preference of Odors,” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 489–93. As they write, “We demonstrated the existence of postchoice preference changes not only when choices were remembered, but also, critically, when choices were forgotten.”
Even when people were making: Tali Sharot et al., “How Choice Reveals and Shapes Expected Hedonic Outcome,” Journal of Neuroscience, March 25, 2009, 3760–65. The researchers note that subjects might have had some preference for a vacation destination before they made their choice but that “these differences may not have been large enough prechoice to be captured behaviorally using standard ratings.” But, they note, “postchoice differences in preferences became large enough to be observed using the same rating scale. The critical finding is that after a decision was made, the difference in caudate nucleus activity associated with the selected, versus the rejected, option was further enhanced.” For another study, which involved an increase in liking for a CD after it was chosen (associated with specific brain activity), see Jungang Qin et al., “How Choice Modifies Preference: Neural Correlates of Choice Justification,” NeuroImage 55 (2011): 240–46.
In a follow-up study: The authors point out that they were trying, in this study, to counter a methodological critique that has been made against arguments that preference can come after choice: “The core argument here is that people’s preferences cannot be measured perfectly, and are subject to rating noise. As participants gain experience with the rating scale they will provide more accurate ratings such that post-choice shifts in ratings simply reflect the unmasking of the participants’ initial preferences (which can be predicted by their choices) rather than reflecting any changes in preference induced by choice.” In this study, however, preferences were actually entirely detached from the decision-making process. See Tali Sharot et al., “Do Decisions Shape Preference? Evidence from Blind Choice,” Psychological Science 9 (2010): 1231–35.
Some even suggest: See Carlos Alós-Ferrer et al., �
�Choices and Preferences: Evidence from Implicit Choices and Response Times,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48, no. 6 (Nov. 2012): 1336–42.
In studies Zellner has done: See Debra Z. Zellner et al., “Protection for the Good: Subcategorization Reduces Hedonic Contrast,” Appetite 38 (2002): 175–80. Zellner notes, “Notice the subjects had plenty of room in the rating scale to indicate that the test stimuli were less good than the context (good) stimuli without indicating that they disliked them.”
A more palatable opening: See Martin Yeomans, “Palatability and the Microstructure of Feeding in Humans: The Appetizer Effect,” Appetite 27 (1996): 119–33. In another study, it was noted that the mere sight of a palatable meal (versus a less palatable meal) was enough to increase the subjects’ “rated desire to eat.” See Andrew J. Hill et al., “Hunger and Palatability: Tracking Ratings of Subjective Experience Before, During, and After the Consumption of Preferred and Less Preferred Food,” Appetite 5 (1984): 361–71.
The peak of our sudden disliking: “For all sensory variables measured and for all foods consumed, the greatest decline in pleasantness occurred for the eaten food 2 min after consumption.” See Marion Heterington, Barbara J. Rolls, and Victoria J. Burley, “The Time Course of Sensory-Specific Satiety,” Appetite 12 (1989): 57–68.
“The pleasantness of foods”: Barbara J. Rolls et al., “How Sensory Properties of Foods Affect Human Feeding Behavior,” Physiological Behavior 29 (1982): 409–17.
In monkeys the mere sight: The drop-off was much less for foods that had not been eaten, even after satiation. Hugo D. Critchley and Edmund T. Rolls, “Hunger and Satiety Modify the Olfactory and Visual Neurons in the Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex,” Journal of Neurophysiology 75, no. 4 (April 1996): 1673–86.
Scientists have speculated: See, for example, Edmund T. Rolls, “Multisensory Neuronal Convergence of Taste, Somatosensory, Visual, Olfactory, and Auditory Inputs,” in The Handbook of Multisensory Processes, ed. Gemma Calvert, Charles Spence, and Barry E. Stein (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), 319.
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