Smells may be far more powerful than we think; especially when it comes to how much food you take in. Some new research appearing in the new journal Flavour suggests that the the strength of food aroma can make a difference in how much of a food people eat. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t we all over-indulge in foods that smell especially good?
The team of researchers, led by René A de Wijk, from the Top Institute Food and Nutrition, Wageningen, The Netherlands, was trying to find out if increasing the aroma intensity of a food had any impact on how much someone would eat on a bite-by-bite basis.
The team watched 10 subjects (ages 36 to 50 years old) eat a vanilla custard desert, but they had to do so in a dentists’ chair. Each subject was fitted with a nose-piece connected to a machine that delivered aromas of the desert along with a tub that was placed in their mouths to pump in the right amount of custard. It’s a hard way to eat, no doubt, but it let the researchers vary the smell as well as measure very specifically how much was eaten.
The participants could control (by button) how much custard they got, and they were then randomly presented with three creamy smells – no smell, a weak smell and a strong smell. The actual taste of the custard desert never changed.
The team of Dutch researchers found that the intensity of the food’s aroma affects the first bite, as well as additional bites you take as part of the meal. Higher aroma intensities (more concentrated smells) brought smaller bite sizes. Especially influenced by aroma was the next to the last bite.
Smaller bites are known to be associated with lower flavor sensations from a food, and are the body’s natural feedback loop that uses bite size to manage the amount of flavor experienced. So if you smell a stronger aroma of creaminess, you may eat smaller bites in an unconscious effort to balance the taste and possible fat and calories.
Continues below…
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Stronger Food Smells Mean Smaller Bites… Continued…
As you can see, there are many sense and digestive factors that are at work when choosing what size bite you’ll be taking. Smell appears to be another significant factor in deciding on that size.
The decrease in bite size in relation to a smell is fairly small… it may be from 5% to 10% of food intake for each bite according to the researchers.
The amount of food anyone puts in their mouth each time, at each meal, varies considerably from person to person, between types of foods and texture. Harder foods take longer to chew and therefore eaten in smaller bites compared to softer ones. Also, when you start to feel full, the size of your bites goes down. People also generally take smaller bites of a food when they don’t care for it, or if it’s not familiar.
The researchers suggest that food aroma could be manipulated in order to control how much people would eat. Stronger smells might bring a 5% to 10% drop in bite size, and this could help many with the struggle to lose weight.











































