Can sounds make food taste better? ⏲️ 6 Minute English

174,643 views ・ 2023-06-22

BBC Learning English


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Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I’m Neil.
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And I’m Beth. There are some well-known English expressions that make a link
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between seeing and eating. ‘Your eyes are bigger than your belly’ means you
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have taken more food than you can eat; and the saying you eat with
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your eyes first means that food seems more desirable when it looks good on the plate.
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But seeing isn’t the only sense involved in tasting food - in fact, it may not even be
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the most important. First, you see your favourite bacon sandwich, then comes its delicious smell,
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quickly followed by the crunchy feel and salty taste as you take a bite.
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Now scientists are learning more about the power of another of our senses – sound – and
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how it affects our sense of taste. ‘Sonic seasoning’ is the idea that when you hear certain sounds or
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music, they can enhance one flavour or another in the food you’re eating. In this programme
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we'll be eating with our ears as we investigate the link between sound and our tastebuds. And,
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as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.
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But first I have a question for you, Beth. The idea that sounds influence taste might
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seem strange, but the food-processing companies that produce some of our most familiar food and
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drinks have long known that sound equal sales. In the UK, for example, the chocolate company,
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Cadbury, hired the London Contemporary Orchestra to perform classical music tunes symbolising each
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flavour of their Dairy Milk chocolates. So, which background sound did whisky-makers,
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Singletons, used to advertise their scotch whisky? Was it:
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a) jazz music? b) bagpipes playing? or,
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c) birds tweeting?
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I’ll guess they used some smooth jazz music.
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OK, Beth. I'll reveal the answer later in the programme. Charles Spence is professor of
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experimental psychology at Oxford University. After years studying how our brains process
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information, he believes sound plays a much bigger role in how we taste our food than we think,
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something he explained to Mike Johnson, presenter of BBC World Service programme, The Food Chain:
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In general how big a contribution do you think these sounds, and sound generally, actually makes
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to how we perceive food compared to the more obvious senses, of course, of sight and smell?
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So I think it's much more important than we realise, and that can start from before
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we’ve put anything into our mouth - it can be this sound of the sizzle of the steak on the hot plate,
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it can be the gurgle and the sizzle and the steam of the coffee machine… those are
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all cues that set up expectations about what we're about to taste.
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Professor Spence uses onomatopoeia to describe some sounds. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds
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like what it means, words like 'buzz', ‘zoom’ and ‘whack’. He uses the word sizzle for the hissing
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sound made by frying meat, and describes a coffee machine using the word gurgle - the
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low pleasant sound liquids make when flowing quickly through a narrow space. Professor Spence
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thinks that hearing these sounds while eating psychologically intensifies the flavour of food.
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But it's not just psychologists… the food industry has also discovered the selling power of sound.
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Nowadays restaurants everywhere are carefully selecting the music they play on their dining-room
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playlists. Reporter, Gianna Palmer, visited New York restaurant, Smashburger, where every song is
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specially chosen by professional music pickers. Here she interviews one of them, Amy Frishkey,
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head of music design company, Mood Media, for BBC World Service programme, The Food Chain:
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Music just kind of has the ability to put you in a different space and a lot of times,
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then your mood could lead to an impulse buy that you didn't plan on…
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You're having such a good time eating out, ‘oh, I'll get dessert!’
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Yeah right… I'm really enjoying the music, I think I'll linger here a bit longer.
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Choosing the right dining-room music not only makes food taste better,
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it puts people in a good mood - something which might lead to an impulse buy – suddenly
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buying something you had not planned to because you want it when you see it.
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What’s more, a good restaurant atmosphere encourages customers
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to linger – to stay longer than necessary because they’re having a good time. Of course,
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the longer customers linger and the more they buy on impulse, the more money a restaurant makes.
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I think it's time you revealed the answer to your question,
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Neil. You asked me which background sound drinks company, Singletons,
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used to advertise their whisky. I guessed it was jazz music… so was I right?
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That was… the wrong answer I'm afraid, Beth. In fact, Singletons used the sound of birds
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tweeting to sell their whisky - probably a better idea than using bagpipes! OK,
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let's recap the vocabulary we've learned from this programme on sonic
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seasoning starting with the English saying, you eat with your eyes first,
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an idiom meaning that when food is visually appealing, it's more appetizing.
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Onomatopoeia is when words sound like what they mean, for example ‘boom’, ‘whack’ and ‘moo’.
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Other examples of onomatopoeia are sizzle - a hissing sound, and gurgle – the low
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pleasant sound a liquid makes when it flows quickly through a narrow space.
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An impulse buy is suddenly buying something that
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you had not planned to because you want it when you see it.
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And finally the verb to linger means to stay somewhere longer than necessary because you’re
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enjoying yourself. Once again our six minutes are up. Join us next time for
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more trending topics and useful vocabulary here at Six Minute English. Goodbye everyone!
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Bye!
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