Summertime is often filled with outdoor parties and food trucks, meaning you’re spending more time standing up and eating.
But if you want to actually enjoy your meal, researchers say you’re better off finding a seat.
A new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research finds posture impacts taste perception, with food tasting better when you’re sitting down.
Lead author Dipayan Biswas, PhD, professor of marketing at the University of South Florida, is an expert in cross-modal effects and looked specifically at how the vestibular sense, which is responsible for balance, posture and spatial orientation, interacts with the gustatory sensory system, which impacts taste and flavor.
The tongue recognizes five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami—a savory aspect associated with meat and mushrooms.
But the taste you actually experience isn’t that simple. In recent years, a growing number of studies have shown that taste can be influenced by a host of surprising factors.
1. Language
People praise food with a descriptive name more than the same food with a lackluster name. For example: “Succulent Italian Seafood Filet” versus “Seafood Filet.”
2. Utensils
Spoons made from copper or zinc enhance a food’s apparent saltiness. Researchers suggest further study into how this could help people eat less salt.
3. Temperature
Warm beer tastes more bitter, cold ham tastes saltier, and bacon beer? Tastes horrible*.
4. Color
Forty-eight percent of participants thought soda in a blue glass was more thirst-quenching than in other colors, likely because they associated blue with cold.
5. Environment
People were asked to describe the qualities of the same Scotch whisky in three rooms themed as grassy, sweet, or woody. (For example, the first room smelled of grass and played recordings of bleating sheep.) They largely responded with “grassy,” “sweet,” or “woody,” respectively.
6. Expectations
After sampling, French sommeliers liked wine poured from a high-priced bottle over the same wine poured from a cheap one.
7. Memory
Recalling a positive memory about eating vegetables will make a present experience with them more enjoyable (and you’ll take a bigger portion too).
He found that holding a standing posture for even a few minutes prompts physical stress, muting taste buds.
The force of gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body, causing the heart to work harder to pump blood back up to the top of the body, accelerating heart rate.
This activates the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and leads to increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol.
This chain reaction reduces sensory sensitivity, which impacts food and beverage taste evaluation, food temperature perception and overall consumption volume.
When people experience discomfort, foods that normally taste good do not appear as pleasant to the palate.
Biswas confirmed his hypothesis by having 350 participants rate the tastiness of a pita chip.
Those who were standing gave it a less favorable rating than those who were sitting in a padded chair.
Researchers then provided participants classic bite-sized brownies baked at a local restaurant that were tested and widely considered pleasant tasting.
Those who were sitting down rated them to be most delicious.
However, when the baker altered the recipe and made the taste unpleasant by adding an extra ¼ cup of salt, the results were opposite.
Participants standing up didn’t notice the brownies tasting saltier to that extent, and actually rated them to have a relatively more favorable taste perception than those who sampled them while sitting down.
“This finding suggests that parents might be able to make unpleasant-tasting, healthy foods seem more palatable to reluctant children by having them eat standing up (vs. sitting down).
In a similar vein, it might be beneficial to maintain a standing posture when consuming pharmaceutical products that have unpleasant tastes.”
Those who were sitting down rated them to be most delicious. The image is in the public domain.
Biswas expanded the study by inducing additional stress.
He required the participants to try fruit snacks while carrying a shopping bag, mimicking what happens when one tries samples at a grocery store or in a food court.
Both sitting and standing participants reported the additional weight made the food item taste even worse.
This highlights the underlying mechanism related to physical stress driving the effects of posture on taste evaluations.
In addition, the team tested posture’s impact on temperature perception.
Participants were provided cups of hot coffee.
Those standing up reported it not being as intense as those who were sitting down.
However, they drank less than those sitting, suggesting physical stress suppresses appetite.
Eating while standing can also help with long-term weight loss goals.
Specifically, eating while standing (vs. sitting) leads to lower amount of consumption.
Moreover, a standing position leads to greater physical stress, which in turn makes the heart pump more blood.
Source:
University of South Florida
Media Contacts:
Tina Meketa – University of South Florida
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Open access
“Extending the Boundaries of Sensory Marketing and Examining the Sixth Sensory System: Effects of Vestibular Sensations for Sitting versus Standing Postures on Food Taste Perception”. Dipayan Biswas, Courtney Szocs, Annika Abell.
Journal of Consumer Research. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucz018
