Snap, Crackle & Pop

Just a morsel I thought I’d share found in this week’s Good Living in the Sydney Morning Herald.

One professor Charles Spence, specializing in experimental psychology at Oxford University, has won an Ig Noble award for his work on the role of sound. But not just any sounds, the sounds related specifically to food, and the vital role these sounds play in our appreciation, and indeed enjoyment, of food. A little food for thought?

Amongst other tests, Professor Spence’s gastronomical experiments had volunteers eating crisps while wearing headphones, through which he would alter the sound the crisp made as they bit into their seemingly crisp crisp. However, by making the sounds louder or the frequencies higher, he found people rated the crisps up to 15 percent fresher.

A resourceful way to get around serving stale biscuits? Perhaps not, but an interesting thought to ponder nonetheless.

Smell has always been associated with food, as have the other senses of look, feel, and of course, taste. But sound, in large part, has been left to the wayside, residing in a food world void, rather than playing a leading role in our understanding of what makes food so enjoyable to us. Strange; to describe food, we use often use onomatopoeias and descriptors of sound, for example “crisp,” “crunch,” and “crackle,” but rarely do we do we acknowledge the importance of sound on its own terms.

Gives the phrase, “This sounds yummy” a whole new meaning…