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‘Hot stuff’: Making food more desirable with animated temperature cues
Nothing beats a comforting image of a bowl of hot soup with whisps of rising steam unless it is the actual soup itself. The current paper investigates the influence of food photography on people's food expectations. Despite the recognition of the importance of the food temperature depicted in food images, the effectiveness of using visual cues on food photography to indicate temperature and potential managerial outcomes of so doing has barely been researched. This study explored whether the addition of visual temperature cues to food images was effective in activating relevant temperature associations, leading to downstream consequences, including food desirability, freshness perception and willingness to pay (WTP), with a focus on thermal temperature cues. Three online experimental studies were conducted showing that animated traces of steam added to food images not only induced hot temperature perception of the food, but also increased food desirability and freshness perception. Meanwhile, implied animation (i.e., static picture of rising steam) did not produce any such effect. Further, food image appeal was found to be a boundary condition for the effect of hot temperature cues: that is, when the food images is of low appeal, traces of steam which increased hot temperature perception, in turn enhanced freshness perception and food desirability, but not WTP. The effectiveness of animated steam textures crossmodally enhancing thermal temperature perception and food desirability underscores the potential in digital food creation and marketing.
Preferences for nutrients and sensory food qualities identify biological sources of economic values in monkeys.
Value is a foundational concept in reinforcement learning and economic choice theory. In these frameworks, individuals choose by assigning values to objects and learn by updating values with experience. These theories have been instrumental for revealing influences of probability, risk, and delay on choices. However, they do not explain how values are shaped by intrinsic properties of the choice objects themselves. Here, we investigated how economic value derives from the biologically critical components of foods: their nutrients and sensory qualities. When monkeys chose nutrient-defined liquids, they consistently preferred fat and sugar to low-nutrient alternatives. Rather than maximizing energy indiscriminately, they seemed to assign subjective values to specific nutrients, flexibly trading them against offered reward amounts. Nutrient-value functions accurately modeled these preferences, predicted choices across contexts, and accounted for individual differences. The monkeys' preferences shifted their daily nutrient balance away from dietary reference points, contrary to ecological foraging models but resembling human suboptimal eating in free-choice situations. To identify the sensory basis of nutrient values, we developed engineering tools that measured food textures on biological surfaces, mimicking oral conditions. Subjective valuations of two key texture parameters-viscosity and sliding friction-explained the monkeys' fat preferences, suggesting a texture-sensing mechanism for nutrient values. Extended reinforcement learning and choice models identified candidate neuronal mechanisms for nutrient-sensitive decision-making. These findings indicate that nutrients and food textures constitute critical reward components that shape economic values. Our nutrient-choice paradigm represents a promising tool for studying food-reward mechanisms in primates to better understand human-like eating behavior and obesity.
Food's visually perceived fat content affects discrimination speed in an orthogonal spatial task.
Choosing what to eat is a complex activity for humans. Determining a food's pleasantness requires us to combine information about what is available at a given time with knowledge of the food's palatability, texture, fat content, and other nutritional information. It has been suggested that humans may have an implicit knowledge of a food's fat content based on its appearance; Toepel et al. (Neuroimage 44:967-974, 2009) reported visual-evoked potential modulations after participants viewed images of high-energy, high-fat food (HF), as compared to viewing low-fat food (LF). In the present study, we investigated whether there are any immediate behavioural consequences of these modulations for human performance. HF, LF, or non-food (NF) images were used to exogenously direct participants' attention to either the left or the right. Next, participants made speeded elevation discrimination responses (up vs. down) to visual targets presented either above or below the midline (and at one of three stimulus onset asynchronies: 150, 300, or 450 ms). Participants responded significantly more rapidly following the presentation of a HF image than following the presentation of either LF or NF images, despite the fact that the identity of the images was entirely task-irrelevant. Similar results were found when comparing response speeds following images of high-carbohydrate (HC) food items to low-carbohydrate (LC) food items. These results support the view that people rapidly process (i.e. within a few hundred milliseconds) the fat/carbohydrate/energy value or, perhaps more generally, the pleasantness of food. Potentially as a result of HF/HC food items being more pleasant and thus having a higher incentive value, it seems as though seeing these foods results in a response readiness, or an overall alerting effect, in the human brain.
Problems Associated with Marketing Food and Drink Specifically at Women
<jats:p>In recent years, several brands have received much negative press coverage when trying to market their food and drink products specifically at women. This is, in part, because the taste preferences/sensitivities of men and women are actually quite similar. In fact, perhaps the one and only area where consumers are willing to accept (or should that be swallow) ingested products explicitly targeted at women or men is in the case of nutritional foods/supplements. Such products are not really sold on the basis of their taste/flavour anyway. Many consumers are also sensitive to the so-called pink tax, when near-identical products cost more when sold to women rather than to men (e.g., as in the case of female razors). As the four recent examples discussed in this review make clear, it can be difficult to roll-out a new food or beverage product, or else extend a pre-existing product line, that is especially for women without coming across as sexist/condescending. As such, marketers need to tread carefully, otherwise they may end-up generating unwanted negative publicity. Ultimately, therefore, adopting an implicit approach to gender-based marketing, should that be the direction that a brand wants to take, will likely have more chance of avoiding negative publicity than the explicit targeting of food/beverage-related products in what is undoubtedly a highly-politicized area.</jats:p>
Explaining seasonal patterns of food consumption
When questioned, people typically report that different foods are appropriate at different times of the year. That is, patterns of food consumption exhibit seasonal variations. Changes in food odour hedonics and familiarity ratings have also been reported over the course of the year, especially in those countries with marked seasonal changes in climate. The question addressed in this review is what factors help to explain these seasonal differences in food consumption. While our nutritional needs undoubtedly do differ somewhat over the course of the year, environmental (e.g., think only of changes in ambient temperature and/or humidity), physiological/perceptual (i.e., threshold changes), and psychological factors (e.g., wanting to make a healthy start in the New Year) also play a role. Taken together, though, it would appear that cultural/ritual factors, as well as the influence of increasingly-sophisticated data-driven marketing may be more important than nutritional, environmental, or physiological factors in helping to explain why it is that so many of us choose to eat different foods at different times of the year, despite the increasing availability of many foods on a year-round basis in the increasingly globalized food marketplace in many developed countries.
On the changing colour of food & drink
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. There is something of a tension between consistency and natural variation as far as the visual appearance properties of food and drink are concerned. While the majority of natural products tend to change their appearance as they age/ripen, many processed foods, by contrast, are specifically designed, or formulated, so as to maintain a consistent (optimal) visual appearance during the lifetime (or shelf-life) of the product. That said, food and beverage companies sometimes do suddenly change the colour of their products (e.g., to address legislation around the use of artificial food colours, as a result of changing consumer preferences/interests, or else simply to capture the consumers' attention on the shelf). A number of modernist chefs, especially those fond of molecular gastronomy/cuisine, and mixologists, have also become increasingly interested in (changing) the colour of the foods and drinks that they serve (either to surprise or entertain their guests, or else to play to the Instagram crowd). Intriguingly, several new chemical/technical means of changing the appearance properties of food and drink in real-time have been developed recently, thus raising the question of how people will respond. The context in which the colour change occurs, and the cause to which it is attributed, may well both play a key role in determining consumer acceptance of such novel rapid transformation of the appearance of food and drink, especially given the a widespread aversion amongst consumers to those food colours that are (perceived to be) artificial.
Craving what you imagine: How sensory mental imagery relates to trait food craving and BMI.
Mental imagery (MI), particularly visual imagery, is thought to play a key role in inducing food cravings, yet its relationship with trait food craving and adiposity remains underexplored. This study investigated how MI for multiple senses is related to the individual food craving trait and BMI. Experiment 1, conducted with a cohort of 291 individuals, used a partial Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (PSI-Q) and the Food Craving Inventory. Experiment 2 expanded on this with a large sample (n = 1371) collected across NZ, the United Kingdom, and the United States, incorporating a full PSI-Q with an additional food dimension, the Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale, as well as the Food Craving Questionnaire-Trait. Across both studies, weak positive correlations emerged between the vividness of olfactory MI scores and trait food craving. In Experiment 2, the vividness scores associated with Smell, Taste, Food, Sensation, and Feel were weakly correlated with the trait food craving measure. Interestingly, an individual's spontaneous use of visual MI, measured with the Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale, was indirectly linked to BMI, mediated by an individual's food craving trait. These findings provide novel insights into the role of sensory MI in habitual food cravings and adiposity, while at the same time highlighting methodological gaps in current approaches to measuring individual sensory MI.
Constructing healthy food names: On the sound symbolism of healthy food
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd The interest in healthy food has grown rapidly amongst both consumers and food manufacturers in recent years. However, which foods should be considered healthy is sometimes ambiguous. Identifying those factors that influence the perception of healthfulness is of interest both to consumers and to food manufacturers. Previous research has shown that product-intrinsic (e.g., nutrition) and product-extrinsic (e.g., the colour of the packaging) factors can shape the consumers’ perception of healthy food. However, it is less clear how brand names, one of the important product-extrinsic factors, influence the perception of healthy food. Relying on the theory of sound symbolism, we investigated whether the sounds present in fictitious brand names would influence the expected healthfulness of food. Across four studies, we demonstrate that phonemic sounds with higher (vs. lower) frequencies (e.g., /f, s, i, e/ vs. /b, d, g, o, u/) are perceived to be healthier. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate the phenomenon using general categories of “healthy” vs. “unhealthy” foods, whereas Studies 3 and 4 conceptually replicate the results using the names (or descriptions) of food products (e.g., “vegetable vs. beef sandwich”) and a different study design (within-participants for Study 3 and between-participants for Study 4). We also explore the boundary conditions for this sound symbolic effect, demonstrating that higher (vs. lower) frequency sounds change the health perception of savoury food products, but not sweet ones (Studies 3 and 4). These findings provide actionable insights for those wanting to develop brand names for food products and reveal its important link with the consumers' perceptions of healthy food.
Touch-flavor transference: Assessing the effect of packaging weight on gustatory evaluations, desire for food and beverages, and willingness to pay.
Product packaging serves a number of distinct functions and influences the way in which consumers respond to various product offerings. The research reported here examines whether the haptic characteristics of a non-diagnostic product packaging cue, namely its weight, affects the response of consumers. This article reviews existing research on haptic transference and proposes a conceptual framework to explore how the weight of product packaging affects the flavor of the food or beverages, and, in turn, consumers' desire for consumption and willingness to pay. Two studies demonstrate that an increase in packaging weight affects both desire and willingness to pay for the product. These effects are serially mediated by perceived flavor intensity and overall flavor evaluation. Based on these insights, implications for the design of food and beverages packaging are discussed.
Health and Pleasure in Consumers' Dietary Food Choices: Individual Differences in the Brain's Value System.
Taking into account how people value the healthiness and tastiness of food at both the behavioral and brain levels may help to better understand and address overweight and obesity-related issues. Here, we investigate whether brain activity in those areas involved in self-control may increase significantly when individuals with a high body-mass index (BMI) focus their attention on the taste rather than on the health benefits related to healthy food choices. Under such conditions, BMI is positively correlated with both the neural responses to healthy food choices in those brain areas associated with gustation (insula), reward value (orbitofrontal cortex), and self-control (inferior frontal gyrus), and with the percent of healthy food choices. By contrast, when attention is directed towards health benefits, BMI is negatively correlated with neural activity in gustatory and reward-related brain areas (insula, inferior frontal operculum). Taken together, these findings suggest that those individuals with a high BMI do not necessarily have reduced capacities for self-control but that they may be facilitated by external cues that direct their attention toward the tastiness of healthy food. Thus, promoting the taste of healthy food in communication campaigns and/or food packaging may lead to more successful self-control and healthy food behaviors for consumers with a higher BMI, an issue which needs to be further researched.
The Psychological Effects of Food Colors
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Color is perhaps the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting our expectations regarding the likely taste and flavor of food and drink. To date, a large body of laboratory research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the color of a variety of different food and beverage items can exert a sometimes dramatic impact on the expectations, and hence on the subsequent experiences, of consumers (or participants in the laboratory). However, should the color not match the taste, then a negatively valenced disconfirmation of expectation may well result. Food colors can have rather different meanings and hence give rise to differing expectations, in different age groups, not to mention in different cultures. Genetic factors may also modulate the psychological impact of food color. By gaining a better understanding of the sensory and hedonic expectations elicited by food color in different groups of individuals, researchers are slowly coming to understand the various ways in which what we see can modulate the multisensory perception of flavor, as well as our appetitive and avoidance-related food behaviors.
Consumer sensory neuroscience in the context of food marketing
The development of neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided marketers with the possibility of studying changes in brain activity in relation to marketing information (packaging, pricing, promotions, etc.) and decision-making. When consumers interact with a product, the brain captures and stores the related sensory experience in a multisensory representation in memory. Such memories serve consumers when making their future decisions. Thus, the senses play an important role in consumer behavior and the results of fMRI studies provide an interesting way for sensory marketers to analyze how the brain processes sensory information affecting product perception. In this article, we show how multisensory information, as well as mental simulation, impact taste expectations and subsequently taste, or bettersaid, flavor, perception in the light of neuroimaging studies. First, we discuss how neural analysis can help to understand the effect of marketing information on taste perception. Second, we highlight the role of gustatory inference on food perception in light of the latest fMRI findings. Third, we suggest some directions to improve the understanding of crossmodal correspondences in the context of consumer sensory experiences.
Oral-Somatosensory Contributions to Flavor Perception and the Appreciation of Food and Drink
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. In this chapter, we highlight the crucial role played by the oral-somatosensory attributes of food and drink in determining our perception, and hence our enjoyment, of many of our most preferred foods and drinks, as well as our dislike of certain others. However, beyond the multisensory textural properties of the food itself, and beyond the temperature, etc., the cutlery and crockery we use and hold when eating can also impact the tasting experience. We summarize recent examples to illustrate some of the most innovative ways in which chefs, designers, and artists are now starting to exploit the latest findings from the field of gastrophysics research in order to change, and hopefully to enhance, the eating experience-everything from encouraging people to eat with the hands through to the recent introduction of furry cutlery.
Food Color and Its Impact on Taste/Flavor Perception
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. Color is perhaps the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting our expectations regarding the likely taste and flavor of food and drink. To date, a large body of research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the color of a variety of different food and beverage items exerts a sometimes dramatic impact on the expectations, and often on the subsequent taste/flavor experiences of participants in the lab, as well as consumers under the more naturalistic conditions of everyday life. It is important to note that food colors can have rather different meanings, and hence give rise to differing expectations in these different age groups, not to mention in those from different cultures. By gaining a better understanding of the sensory and hedonic expectations that are elicited by food color in different groups of individuals, researchers are now coming to better understand the various ways in which what we see can modulate the multisensory perception of flavor, and alter our food behaviors.
Using food insecurity in health prevention to promote consumer's embodied self-regulation.
Health messages designed to address obesity are typically focused on the long-term benefits of eating healthy food. However, according to the insurance hypothesis, obese people are food insecure, and this causes them to be overly concerned about short-term consumption. As such, it is necessary to rethink public health messaging and consider how to reduce short-term insecurity by eating healthy food.
Enhancing the experience of food and drink via neuroscience-inspired olfactory design
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Olfactory cues, both orthonasal (when we inhale) and retronasal (when we swallow/breathe out from the back of the nose), play a crucial role in the experience, and enjoyment, of food and drink. However, the design of product packaging glassware, and even plateware has typically not been optimized to deliver the ideal orthonasal hit. This review highlights a number of recent attempts by packaging manufacturers to improve the orthonasal experience for the consumer. The various ways in which modernist chefs, molecular mixologists, culinary artists, and designers have been playing with the delivery of both foreground and background aromas and scents in order to complement the dishes and drinks they serve is also examined. Finally, I highlight some of the ways that technology may be used to deliver food aromas in the future, and stress the need for more research in order to determine whether enhanced olfactory design (e.g. in scent-enabled cutlery and packaging) may one day be used to help nudge consumers toward healthier eating behaviours. The important distinction between natural and synthetic (or better said, between perceived natural vs. perceived synthetic) aromas is also discussed, as this will likely play an important role in determining the future uptake of such innovative olfactory delivery solutions.
Comfort food: A review
© 2017 The Authors Everyone has heard of comfort foods, but what exactly are they, and what influence, if any, do they actually have over our mood? In this review, I summarize the literature on this important topic, highlighting the role that comfort foods play in alleviating loneliness by priming positive thoughts of previous social interactions, at least amongst those who are securely attached. The evidence concerning individual differences in the kinds of food that are likely to constitute comfort food for different sections of the population is also highlighted. Intriguingly, while most people believe that comfort foods elevate their mood, robust empirical findings in support of such claims are somewhat harder to come by. Such results have led to some influential headlines suggesting that the very notion of comfort food is nothing more than a myth. While this may be overstating matters somewhat, it is clear that many uncertainties still surround if, when, and for whom, the consumption of comfort food really does provide some sort of psychological benefit. This represents something of a challenge for all those marketers out there waiting to associate their products with the appealing notion of comfort food.
What Is the Relationship between the Presence of Volatile Organic Compounds in Food and Drink Products and Multisensory Flavour Perception?
This narrative review examines the complex relationship that exists between the presence of specific configurations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in food and drink products and multisensory flavour perception. Advances in gas chromatography technology and mass spectrometry data analysis mean that it is easier than ever before to identify the unique chemical profile of a particular food or beverage item. Importantly, however, there is simply no one-to-one mapping between the presence of specific VOCs and the flavours that are perceived by the consumer. While the profile of VOCs in a particular product undoubtedly does tightly constrain the space of possible flavour experiences that a taster is likely to have, the gustatory and trigeminal components (i.e., sapid elements) in foods and beverages can also play a significant role in determining the actual flavour experience. Genetic differences add further variation to the range of multisensory flavour experiences that may be elicited by a given configuration of VOCs, while an individual’s prior tasting history has been shown to determine congruency relations (between olfaction and gustation) that, in turn, modulate the degree of oral referral, and ultimately flavour pleasantness, in the case of familiar foods and beverages.
Factors influencing the visual deliciousness / eye-appeal of food
In recent years, a growing number of academic researchers, as well as many marketing and design practitioners, have uncovered a variety of factors that would appear to enhance the visual attractiveness, or deliciousness, of food images to the typical consumer. This review, which contains both narrative and systematic elements, critically evaluates the literature concerning the various factors influencing the eye appeal of food images, no matter whether there is an edible food stimulus physically present in front of the viewer or not. We start by summarizing the evidence concerning the human brain's ability to rapidly determine energy-density in a visual scene and pay attention accordingly. Next, we focus on the importance of embodied mental simulation when it comes to enhancing visual deliciousness. Thereafter, we review the literature on the importance of visual aesthetic features in eye-appeal. The wide range of visual attributes that help to enhance food attractiveness include symmetry, shape, freshness, glossiness, dynamic-presentation, etc. The review concludes with sections on the importance of background/ambient lighting/colour, and the tricks used by those who digitally manipulate images. Taken together, therefore, many different factors ultimately influence the visual deliciousness of food images.
Sensory expectations based on product-extrinsic food cues: An interdisciplinary review of the empirical evidence and theoretical accounts
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article constitutes a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the effects of expectations on the sensory perception of food and drink by humans. In the 'Introduction', we summarize the theoretical models of expectations that have been put forward. In the 'Empirical research utilizing direct methods' section, we describe the influence that expectations created by a variety of product extrinsic cues have on sensory perception, hedonic appraisal, and intake/consumption. We critically evaluate the evidence that has emerged from both laboratory studies and real-world research conducted in the setting of the restaurant, canteen, and bar. This literature review is focused primarily on those studies that have demonstrated an effect on tasting. Crucially, this review goes beyond previous work in the area by highlighting the relevant cognitive neuroscience literature (see the section 'Applied research through the lens of cognitive neuroscience methods') and the postulated psychological mechanisms of expectation in terms of recent accounts of predictive coding and Bayesian decision theory (see the 'Predictive coding and expectations'section).