What we hear can change what we taste. Change the music you listen to and you may very well change the taste of whatever you are eating or drinking
Low-pitched sounds and the sound of brass instruments tend to bring out bitterness, while high-pitched piano or wind chimes will bring out the sweetness. Research shows 5-10% change in sweetness ratings not unusual
Loud background noise suppresses our ability to taste sweet and salty tastes, but can enhance our ability to taste umami
Get the music right and research shows you will get 10-12% more enjoyment from whatever you are drinking
The latest research shows that Rachmaninoff's Vocalise makes wine taste fruitier while listening to Debussy's Jardin Sous la Pluie can make a wine taste 20% more acidic instead
Introduction
Does what we hear (or listen to) change what we taste? While the intuitive response might well be Don't be silly, of course not! a growing body of rigorous scientific research conducted over the last few years has shown that it most definitely can. In fact, it turns out that there are a number of qualitatively different ways in which what we hear changes our perception of taste/flavour and how much we enjoy the experience of eating and drinking. Think here of everything from the sound of food (consumption) through to the sound of packaging, and from ambient soundscapes through background music. All of these sonic cues influence us more than any of us probably realize.
And while the dream of enhancing our food and drink experiences through coordinated ambient sound has been around for almost a century, until recently, the technology has always lagged behind the aspirations of those culinary creatives who would like to match different music or soundscapes to different tastes. However, with the new Sony Multi-room audio products, it allows for the delivery of different music (or soundscapes) in different rooms. This new technology sets the stage, then, for the delivery of truly multisensory dining experiences where no matter which room you find yourself in, the music can be matched to help bring out the best in whatever you are tasting. By allowing for the possibility of different music being played in different rooms, the Sony multi-room also opens up the possibility for people to take their food and drink from room to room and to experience how changing the music that they listen to can really change the taste (see Spence et al., 2014b; Velasco et al., 2013).
Culinary artists such as Bompas & Parr (http://bompasandparr.com) are perfectly placed to take the latest scientific findings regarding the cross-sensory influences on our perception (see Bremner, Lewkowicz, & Spence, 2012; Calvert, Spence & Stein, 2004, for reviews of the crossmodal research literature), and use them to create tasty treats. Never before has the science tasted, or sounded, so good.
The remainder of this report looks into the various ways in which what we hear can change what we taste, and summarise briefly what is known about some of the neural mechanisms underlying these effects.
The sonic chip: Multisensory integration
At the simplest level, think only of the sound that many foods make as we bite into and chew them. Just take, for example, the sound of the crunch that, if made louder, radically enhance your experience of the freshness and crunchiness of a crisp - what the North Americans call potato chips (Zampini & Spence, 2004). In fact, many of our favourite sensory experiences around food and drink, think here only of the crispy, crackly, creamy, and carbonated sensations that we all know and love, are dependent, in large part, on the associated (often distinctive) sounds (see Spence, 2015a, for a review). Such crossmodal effects likely result from multisensory integration - that is, from our brain's tendency to integrate the inputs from the different senses that belong to the same object, event, or in this case, food (see Spence, 2015b, for a review). We are currently investigating which musical sounds best match the popping of the bubbles in a champagne or fizzy drink. Specifically, we are investigating what influence listening to music with a rapidly plucked sound of a harp has. We are also investigating whether slow music results in flavours lasting longer in the mouth than more up tempo music (cf. Wang & Spence, in press b).
It is important to note that, our brains sometimes exhibit sensory dominance - using one sense to construct the experience in the others - as when making the crunching sound louder can make the crisps actually feel different in the mouth. At other times, our brains combine weak inputs from each of our senses to give rise to a multisensory flavour experience that can be much richer than the sum of the parts; this is known as superadditivity (Spence, 2008).
The sound of packaging: Anchoring and setting expectations
Beyond any sounds that are associated with consumption, the sounds of the packaging in which a food is experienced - think the rattle of the crisps packet, or the pop of the champagne cork can also influence our enjoyment of what comes next too. Such effects likely reflect the role of sensory and hedonic expectations in anchoring our subsequent food and drink experiences (see Piqueras-Fiszman & Spence, 2015). Whenever we hear the pop of the champagne cork, or the rattle of the crisp packet, certain expectations automatically come to mind. In a sense, then, we are all like Pavlov's dogs, salivating in response to the dinner bell (see Spence et al., 2011).
Background noise and the masking of taste sensations
As well as enhancing the experience of taste, it is important to note that what we hear can also suppress our ability to taste (see Spence et al., 2014). Here, think only of the loud noise (c. 85 dB) of the engines on the airplane. Such loud background noise suppresses our
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What we hear can change what we taste. Change the music you listen to and you may very well change the taste of whatever you are eating or drinking
