Forget the Salt, Use Instagram to make your Food Taste Better

By: Talha Bhatti  |   August 6th, 2013   |   Business, Mobile Apps, News

There is no doubt that the way food actually looks has a major role in playing how our mind thinks it tastes. This is the case even in situations before we have taken the first taste because our mind is already working hard at determining how what we are looking at may taste when it touches the taste buds on our tongues.

Now a study by some top level researches is suggesting that snapping a photo through instagram before eating it may just change the way your mind perceives its taste for the better. The study, which was published in the Psychological Science journal says exactly that, that instragramming the food you are about to eat may make it taste better.

According to researchers from the University of Minnesota and Harvard Business School, the “rituals enhance the enjoyment of consumption because of the greater involvement in the experience that they prompt.”

Such experiments have been going on for years and a recent one by Kathleen D. Vohs, one of the authors of that study, certainly shows how rituals make the difference. The study did not specifically focus on taking a picture through instagram, but instead on other rituals that can be termed to be as similar in making the food taste better.

“We didn’t study it, but it seems like a ritual that could enhance the pleasure from food!” she told the Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post, discussing the study, talked about the study in the following way:

“In one experiment, half of the 52 total participants were asked to perform a ritual before eating a candy bar: without unwrapping it, break it in half. Unwrap half the bar and eat, then do the same with the other half. The remaining participants were not given special instructions.”

“The participants who engaged in ritualistic behaviours found chocolate to be more flavourful, valuable and deserving of “behavioural savouring.” They didn’t, however, enjoy the chocolate as much when they watched others engage in the same behaviours.”

Another factor of increasing the enjoyment of eating was performing the ritual and then allowing there to be some gap between the ritual and the time that you eat it. Instead of digging in right away, scientists suggest that savouring the look of the food is equally as important as eating.

With all the increase in excitement, scientists were worried about one thing. Which was the increase in enjoyment to levels that this activity becomes a major factor in contributing to national obesity levels.

Source: Huffington Post