Background Noise Affects Taste of Foods

gollum123 writes "The level of background noise affects both the intensity of flavour and the perceived crunchiness of foods, researchers have found. Blindfolded diners assessed the sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness, as well as overall flavour, of foods as they were played white noise. While louder noise reduced the reported sweetness or saltiness, it increased the measure of crunch. It may go some way to explaining why airline food is notoriously bland — a phenomenon that drives airline catering companies to season their foods heavily. In a comparatively small study, 48 participants were fed sweet foods such as biscuits or salty ones such as crisps, while listening to silence or noise through headphones. Also in the group's findings there is the suggestion that the overall satisfaction with the food aligned with the degree to which diners liked what they were hearing — a finding the researchers are pursuing in further experiments."

Re:Synesthesia

[immakiku]

Synesthesia is a fairly well understood defect in the brain. It seems they took a normal sample of people. It's only synesthesia if only a small population of people have it. If everyone is supposed to have it, it wouldn't be a defect.

Re:Airline food is bland because...

[kevinNCSU]

Most of the airlines I've flown on recently, if they serve you an actual meal, has been sandwiches wrapped in saran wrap containing meat and lettuce and tomatoes all of which would spoil rather quickly, certainly not what I would classify long life shit. They are usually loaded on to that plane at the terminal by a catering truck during boarding. Not extremely excellent food, but not terrible instant tv dinner type stuff that seems like it might be months/years old either.