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How We Eat With Our Eyes and Think With Our Stomach

The Hidden Influences That Shape Your Eating Habits

Melanie Mühl & Diana von Kopp

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48 quotes

diet

Chapter 1

  • We instinctively recoil from food that has the “wrong” color.Dec 10 2023 11:10PM
  • This phenomenon was first demonstrated in a scientific study conducted by the chemist H. C. Moir in 1936. In the study, Moir gave his colleagues jelly in various colors—with no difference in their flavor—and noticed that they each reported tasting the flavor associated with the color that they saw.Dec 10 2023 11:10PM
  • According to Kathrin Ohla, a psychologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition at Potsdam-Rehbrücke near Berlin, optics play a particularly important role in our perception of flavor. She explains, “It’s because the mere taste sensation is not object-related enough. When I taste something sweet or sour, that on its own doesn’t tell me what it is.”Dec 10 2023 11:11PM
  • Twentieth-century psychologist Karl Duncker also studied this color phenomenon. In 1939 he conducted a study that tested and assessed a new product on the US market: white chocolate. Volunteers who were allowed to see the chocolate while eating it described it as milkier and less flavorsome than dark chocolate, whereas volunteers who did not see it beforehand did not report noticeable differences.Dec 10 2023 11:11PM
  • In the late eighties, subjects in a test were given vanilla custard with the color of chocolate to eat. None of the participants recognized the vanilla flavor. In some of the most famous experiments, even renowned wine experts failed to identify the distinct taste of white wine when it had been dyed red.Dec 10 2023 11:13PM
  • One year after Pepsi made a similar attempt with a product called Crystal Pepsi, Coca-Cola launched their own sugar-free, clear cola called Tab Clear in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Customers reacted to the missing characteristic color by rejecting the product; Tab Clear proved to be a spectacular flop. Consumers didn’t recognize their Coke. Coca-Cola had taken sensory incongruence a step too far, separating their product from the nostalgia—and color—associated with it.Dec 10 2023 11:14PM
  • And even if this addition of color was presented as harmless, he added, it was still done “for the purpose of deception.” In modern consumer psychology, such deception goes by the name of “product experience.”Dec 10 2023 11:14PM

Chapter 3

  • If you want to prevent the humorless know-it-all from helping himself to one slice after another of your prime roast beef, don’t serve it to him on a white plate; give him a red one. Scientists at Oxford University discovered in neurogastronomic experiments that red tableware reduces hunger.Dec 10 2023 11:19PM
  • Our natural response to danger is to run away, not to feel hungry. Even sushi fans have to admit that six salmon nigiri don’t look very enticing on a red plate.Dec 10 2023 11:19PM
  • Dessert shouldn’t be carelessly served on any old plate either. The Spanish celebrity chef and former head chef at elBulli, Ferran Adrià, led a study in which the participants were served a strawberry mousse either on white or on black plates. The mousse served on white plates fared much better in overall ratings: The testers rated its flavor percent more intense and percent sweeter than the same mousse served on black plates.Dec 10 2023 11:21PM
  • Another experiment by scientists from Oxford University showed that dementia patients in a British hospital ate nearly a third more of their food if their white fish was served on blue plates instead of the usual beige ones: The fish was no longer an indefinable goop but now looked like it was freshly caught from the sea.Dec 10 2023 11:21PM

Chapter 4

  • A study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that our tendency to feel pain is reduced when tasty food is on hand. It’s paradoxical: We seek pleasure and avoid pain, but we endure pain to attain pleasure.Dec 10 2023 11:23PM
  • Wansink’s advice to the restaurant owner: Stock up on chopsticks. Instead of a selection of different-sized plates, provide mostly small plates and ensure that all diners are seated as far away from the buffet as possible. Better still, ensure that they can’t see it at all from their table. In terms of layout this means erect screens to block the view of the food. If, out of the corners of their eyes, people can see enticing dishes and smell their delicious aromas just a few steps away, they will continue eating, whether they are full or not. Food that is available with minimal effort will be eaten.Dec 10 2023 11:25PM

Chapter 6

  • But the truth is: A healthy body doesn’t need to detox! It has a near-perfect, organic cleansing system that conveniently works day and night. Should the body actually be poisoned, a green smoothie is unlikely to help.Dec 18 2023 4:03AM

Chapter 8

  • Carrots used to come in all kinds of colors. Our modern carrot is the result of selective breeding. Many suspect that the reason it’s orange is that in the seventeenth century, the Dutch (the leading carrot producers at the time) wanted to dedicate it to Prince William of OrangeDec 22 2023 1:46PM

Chapter 9

  • Michael Pollan puts it in a nutshell: “Thirty years of official nutritional advice have left us sicker, fatter, and more poorly nourished.” That is our dilemma.Dec 22 2023 1:54PM

Chapter 10

  • Carrots, we learned, were never able to improve eyesight (though they are beneficial to eye health), a misconception promoted by the British army during World War II to conceal from the Germans the real source of their ability to see at night—all-new radar technology.Dec 22 2023 1:59PM

Chapter 11

  • Carbohydrates lower your ghrelin levels particularly quickly, but the levels rise again soon after. Fats, on the other hand, lower ghrelin levels more slowly and keep them low for a longer period of time, which explains why a handful of nuts keeps hunger at bay for longer than a donut.Dec 22 2023 2:06PM

Chapter 12

  • A meal is like a barometer that indicates how well things are going for a couple. If times are hard, things can come to a head at the table. He goes on to suggest that having to sit facing each other brings out the best and worst in us. Sitting together at the table is forced closeness, which is why we tend to have our arguments at mealtimes.Dec 22 2023 7:21PM
  • A sure sign that a relationship is in crisis is when one partner always takes their breakfast eggs with them when going into the kitchen to fetch more coffee—for fear that the other would eat them.Dec 22 2023 7:22PM

Chapter 13

  • In France, for example, according to the sociologist Jean-Pierre Corbeau, it used to be customary in middle- and upper-class circles to leave a little food on the plate to underscore the fact that food wasn’t scarce. The lower classes, on the other hand, would eat up everything on their plates, and children were taught to do so from a young age.Dec 22 2023 7:24PM

Chapter 14

  • “Don’t sell the steak—sell the sizzle,” Wheeler recommends in his 1937 bestseller Tested Sentences That Sell. “The sizzle has sold more steak than the cow ever has,” he says, although he does admit, “The cow is, of course, mighty important.”Dec 22 2023 7:26PM
  • The psychologist Charles Spence explains this phenomenon as a result of behavioral learning. The brain uses cues from one modality (hearing) to inform another (taste).Dec 22 2023 7:27PM
  • In another experiment, Spence and Blumenthal served their volunteers two scoops of ice cream with the bizarre flavor of scrambled eggs and bacon, but one scoop was accompanied by the sound of bacon sizzling in a frying pan and the other by chickens clucking. Depending on the background noises they heard, the volunteers rated the taste (any overall judgment aside) more bacony or more eggy—even though the two scoops were from the same batch of ice creamDec 22 2023 7:28PM

Chapter 15

  • According to various surveys, lip smacking is a common reason for divorceDec 22 2023 7:30PM

Chapter 16

  • The songs are played in a strict order. For starters, there’s Louis Armstrong (low tones for a savory dish) or Paolo Nutini (Scottish music for Scottish salmon), followed by Debussy or Lily Allen (both with high-toned piano to enhance sweet and bitter notes) for mains, and finally there’s James Blunt or Madonna (with piano to boost sweet notes) for dessert.Dec 22 2023 7:34PM
  • In another experiment at Oxford University, test subjects were given four identical pieces of “Cinder Toffee” for dessert that contained both sweet and bitter components. They first listened to high-pitched sounds while eating the toffee, and as a result predominantly tasted its sweetness. They then ate toffee while listening to low-pitched sounds and mainly noticed its bitterness.Dec 22 2023 7:35PM
  • The music professor and composer Elmar Lampson describes hearing as a structured, meaning-generating process involving both the brain and the ear working together to actively produce the auditory sensation: “Hearing shifts the coordinates of our consciousness; we move to another state. Not only am I hearing something—I am in an auditory space where I sense cold or warm, where there are tactile sensations and odors and also the physical impression that something is coming toward me. It’s a world in which thinking and feeling become permeable with each other.”Dec 22 2023 7:35PM

Chapter 17

  • We are attracted not only to the crunch of the chip but also to the crinkle of its packaging. The rustle of the bag affects the perceived freshness of its contentsDec 22 2023 7:37PM

Chapter 18

  • How are children supposed to learn to love vegetables when we put it into their minds that eating carrots and sprouts is an irksome necessity to be endured in order to get to the good bit?Dec 22 2023 7:39PM
  • Steven Witherly, author of Why Humans Like Junk Food, talks of “dynamic contrasts”: Light and dark, sweet and salty, smooth and crunchy are particularly stimulating contrasts for our brain, he says. We just love foods with a crunchy bite that melt in the mouth.Dec 22 2023 7:40PM

Chapter 19

  • We found that expensive ($$$$) restaurants have half as many dishes as cheap ($) restaurants, are three times less likely to talk about the diner’s choice, and are seven times more likely to talk about the chef’s choiceJan 28 2024 10:00PM
  • Lower- and midrange restaurants tend to use filler words such as delicious, golden brown, crispy, rich, tender, soft, fresh, and zesty.Jan 28 2024 10:00PM
  • But why should you need to highlight, for example, that the salad is crisp? Doesn’t that go without saying? Apparently not. The linguist Mark Liberman suggests that we see this overemphasis on certain properties as an expression of a kind of “status anxiety.” Midrange restaurants, he says, are worried that their customers might have doubts about the quality of their products, which is why they reassure them in black and white that everything is fresh, crisp, and deliciousJan 28 2024 10:01PM

Chapter 20

  • Perceived impurity is contagious. Scientists who study emotion call it the principle of contamination. Everything that has touched, been near, or is thought to have been near the object that causes the disgust is considered contaminated. Rozin calls it the law of similarity and the law of contagion.Jan 28 2024 10:04PM

Chapter 21

  • Of all people, it was the rational thinkers who were most susceptible to the delusion, something that could be observed in the participants’ brains. Imaging procedures showed an increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, precisely that area of the brain that is responsible for making rational decisions. Less vulnerable people, however, showed an increased activity in the insular cortex, a region that mainly processes body signals.Jan 28 2024 10:08PM
  • People whose learning behavior was more oriented toward external rewards were more liable to fall for product promises. Those who trusted their own instincts were more likely to be on the safe side.Jan 28 2024 10:08PM

Chapter 23

  • In Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Michael Pollan aptly sums it up: “For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food.”Feb 8 2024 2:37AM

Chapter 24

  • Do you sometimes feel that people close to you are doing exactly the opposite of what you have asked them to do? That they deliberately leave the milk out, don’t clear up after themselves, play the music a tad too loud, or don’t eat their vegetables? There’s no point wasting your energy in getting angry; this rebellious behavior has much less to do with you personally than you may think. It is in fact caused by a psychological phenomenon called reactance. We like to decide for ourselves what we should or shouldn’t be doing at any given moment; requests, limitations, and bans inevitably lead to mental resistance. In short: We object. Since Romeo was banned from loving Juliet, he found her all the more desirable, which is why reactance is sometimes referred to as the Romeo-and-Juliet effect.Feb 8 2024 2:38AM
  • Equally, the organizers of a campaign to introduce plain milk in schools were surprised by the unexpected response to their well-intentioned plan. When a ban was introduced on all sweetened or flavored milk such as chocolate or strawberry, the children, who used to love these drinks, started throwing out percent of the plain milk purchased, and many stopped drinking milk altogether. The ice is dangerously thin where nudging is concerned, because such behavior control usually works only as long as it doesn’t limit the range of choices or impose outright bans, but merely nudges the consumer toward making the “right” choice (see “Nudging”).Feb 8 2024 2:40AM

Chapter 25

  • Certain foods and activities promote dreams: “In general, all stimulent [sic] food excites dreams, such as flock game, ducks, venison and hare. This quality is recognized in asparagus, celery, truffles, perfume, confectioneries and vanilla.”Feb 8 2024 2:44AM

Chapter 26

  • After studying mediating factors to the circadian rhythm in mice, scientists discovered that we’re regulated not only by the light we see, but also by when we eat. When the researchers changed the feeding times for the mice, the bacteria in their gut became unbalanced. If the same goes for us, each shift in mealtimes throws our internal clock out of whack.Feb 8 2024 2:46AM
  • Later, in 2004, scientists at Harvard modernized Ehret’s diet and simplified it radically: No food at all is allowed from twelve to sixteen hours before landing in the new time zone. However, it is recommended to drink large amounts of fluid during the flight, but only water. The body is tricked into abstinence mode and readjusted at the destination—just like your watch.Feb 8 2024 2:46AM

Chapter 27

  • In a study on the relationship between a waiter’s weight and customers’ orders, researchers Tim Döring and Brian Wansink scrutinized the interactions between waitstaff and customers in sixty different restaurants. They recorded the estimated BMI of the waiters and the diners as well as what food and drink they ordered. The results showed that the higher the BMI of the waiter or waitress, the more food and drink the customers ordered, regardless of their own weight. Overweight waitstaff also significantly increased the diners’ proclivity to order alcoholic drinks and desserts.Feb 8 2024 2:48AM
  • If the server is fat, we feel justified to stuff ourselves. If the server is slim, we are more careful about how much we ourselves consume. In other words, thin waiters and waitresses personify our guilty conscience.Feb 8 2024 2:48AM

Chapter 28

  • There is a downside to free food: It is tempting even when you’re not hungry. Except, Google doesn’t want its employees to overeat, and so uses certain psychological tricks. The food cosmos is a cleverly designed arena of manipulation. As soon as you enter the café, the salad bar catches your eye—people tend to help themselves to what they see first. Sweets such as M&M’s are kept in opaque containers, which curbs employees’ calorie intake. Google also encourages employees to reach for a small plate rather than a large one.Feb 8 2024 2:41AM

Chapter 29

  • Our immediate living environment and a short radius of less than seven miles dictate how and where we satisfy our hunger and culinary cravings on a daily basis. The psychologist Brian Wansink calls this our food radius.Feb 8 2024 2:42AM
  • This laziness follows a principle in ecology—the study of how organisms relate to their environment—called optimal foraging, which suggests that we prefer food sources that provide maximum energy output but require minimum energy inputFeb 8 2024 2:43AM

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