Week 6: Turbo Tutorials

Extensive research has found that human beings consistently associate certain sounds with specific tastes– a phenomenon known as ‘cross-modal correspondence.’ In general, higher-pitched sounds are associated with sweet and sour tastes; lower-pitched and dissonant sounds with bitterness; staccato sounds with crunchiness; and smooth, legato sounds with creaminess. Because of this, it is possible to compose music tracks designed to enhance specific flavours in food – as one study demonstrated for chocolate. Participants rated the chocolates as sweeter when they heard a high-frequency ‘sweet’ chocolate soundtrack, compared with a lower-frequency, more dissonant ‘bitter’ soundtrack. 

Moreover, background music have a strong influence on our eating experiences and food choices. Playing French music in British supermarkets, for example, can lead to French wines outselling German brands (and the other way around) whilst a study in a USA university canteen found that playing instrumental Spanish music led to more students choosing paella rather than the Italian chicken parmesan.Classical music seems to be associated with quality and sophistication, and has been shown to cause customers to spend more, especially in wine stores. Rhythm also has an influence on our eating. Apparently we tend to match our eating speed to the tempo of background music: faster music makes us eat more quickly, whereas slower music will make us linger over our meals longer. White noise can reduce our ability to discriminate between tastes, and particularly weakens our perception of sweetness and saltiness. Since planes produce loud background noise, some researchers have suggested that this may be why so many people order tomato juice on a plane journey: tomatoes are rich in umami, and our perception of it may not be so affected by white noise.

Sounds are not only important for taste, but for texture too – as we use the noises food makes to judge its freshness and quality. In general, crispy foods (such as lettuce and crisps) produce high-frequency sounds when we bite into them (above 5 kHz), whereas crunchy foods (like peanuts) make sounds at a much lower range (1-2 kHz). Manipulating noises – for instance, using closed-ear headphones to control what the wearer hears – can alter our perception of food’s crispness and crunchiness. Studies on apples and crisps  found that participants rated these foods as less crisp and softer if the loudness and pitch of their biting sounds was reduced. On the other hand, hearing pre-recorded sounds of people eating crunchy rice crackers led participants in another study to rate a whole range of foods (from marshmallows to chocolate pie) as being harder and drier.

Dr Qian Janice Wang, who studies how auditory stimuli interact with flavour, says there are three main theories. “According to the ‘expectation theory’, we are evolutionarily primed to make predictions about foods before we eat them, for instance to avoid eating poisonous berries,” she says. Our in-built associations and predictions mean that sounds can rapidly influence our judgements about foods. The second theory, ‘attention capture’, states that when foods have complex flavours, specific sounds can cause us to pay more attention to a certain taste or flavour above others. A high-pitched sound, for instance, could highlight sweetness. Finally, sounds and music can arouse certain emotions within us, which can carry over into how we feel about the food, known as ‘emotion mediation’ or ‘the halo effect’. “This would explain why people rate foods as being sweeter when listening to music which they like,” says Dr Wang.

‘Sonic seasoning’ could also become an in-built feature of our dining ware – as demonstrated by the Sonic Sweetener, a cup designed to reduce people’s sugar intake by playing high-pitched ‘sweet’ sounds whilst they drink. When we asked experimental psychologist Professor Charles Spence, he said that there is also great potential to use sound to improve nutrition within hospitals and care homes. “Several studies have shown that playing classical music can enhance the perceived quality of food and drink, which may help patients improve their nutrition. Also, music could have an important role in triggering nostalgia, especially for those older patients who may be suffering from memory loss, which could increase their enjoyment of meals.” 

Paper reference : Eating with our ears: assessing the importance of the sounds of consumption on our perception and enjoyment of multisensory flavour experiences

• Charles Spence

*Gastromusicology: Exploring the Flavor of Sound

Connecticut Public Radio

I would make my audio paper into three parts: 1. A immersive audio drama on how I cook food and eat it( field recording) 2.interview people on the street and artists (who has strong sensitivity to sound and music) on how music and sound influences we eat

3. Academic research and playlists

The food side of sound aesthetics“Definitely, we eat with our ears and not just with our eyes.” [1](Ulrich Troyer, The Vegetable Orchestra)This paper aims at describing some concrete art examples related to sound/food topic startingfrom a scientific perspective and investigating the field bounded by performance art, sound artand research. Through comparing molecular gastronomy to experimental digital music andanalyzing the connection among sound, food and new media as a way to re-design (and re-mediate) the identity of a rural territory (Click’n’Food – Interferenze new arts festival), thispaper outlines how the knowledge of food and sound can add important information in the’tasting’ process, providing a deeper level of understanding of the ‘manufacturing’ act and,more relevant, a much better conscious sensorial experience

Assessing the Role of Sound in the Perception of Foodand Drink Massimiliano Zampini & Charles Spence