Did You Know? – About Your Plate

Did you know that generally speaking the shape, size and color of your plate may affect the way you eat or how you enjoy your food?

Charles Spence thinks about the food, a lot. But he also thinks about the color and size of the dinnerware food is served on.

That’s because Spence, an experimental psychologist at Oxford University, has dedicated his career to studying how our environment affects the way we experience food and drink. He has found, for example, that the weight and color of our utensils can affect how sweet or salty a food tastes. And people tend to enjoy the same dish more when it has a longer, more descriptive name.

In The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining, Spence and psychologist Betina Piqueras-Fiszman from Wageningen University in the Netherlands explore how even the most minute adjustments can enhance the dining experience.

As any good chef will tell you, how the food is arranged on a plate makes a big difference. The shape and color of the dinnerware can affect taste as well. In general, round, white plates tend to enhance sweet flavors in food, whereas black, angular plates tend to bring out more savory flavors, Spence says. And serving food on a red plate tends to reduce the amount diners eat.

Food can look different when it’s placed on different colored plates, Spence says, and flavor our perception. “Studies show that people normally describe sweet tastes as round,” he says, though researchers aren’t sure why. And we tend to associate red with danger, which he says may help explain why we tend to eat less when food is served on red dinnerware.

Just a few interesting thoughts on how you serve ourself and others. Make a mental note and see if any of these observations reported on NPR ring true for you. Though the researchers in this article said they were uncertain as to why people associated sweet things as being round we would suspect that ti is because so many classic sweet treats are round…pies, cakes, cookies, even scoops of ice cream.

You might notice other patterns that affect the way you or your family experience food. If so share them here with all our chums. We are interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.