Student research- experimental dining at LMH

I have always been a huge fan of food and hoped to pursue a food-related career. I am particularly interested in the ‘weird and wonderful’ side of food, such as the innovative and experimental food preparation styles of celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal. Fortunately, I can combine my love of food and research in the MSc in Psychological Research that I am currently undertaking at LMH. I work with Professor Charles Spence in the Crossmodal Laboratory (Experimental Psychology Department) where we study the integration of information across the various sensory modalities (hearing, vision, touch, taste, and smell). My project aims to bring together research areas from psychology, nutrition, health, consumer research, and culinary science to look at the effects of manipulating the senses to control the amount we eat and how we enjoy food.

A large body of research has already demonstrated that manipulating specific elements of food’s visual preparation, such as colour and shape, can influence our feelings towards it. For example, adding red food colouring to white wine can fool even the experts to perceive the aroma of red wine (Morrot, Brochet & Dubourdieu, 2001), while a mousse dessert served on a white plate is perceived as 10% sweeter than the same dessert served on a black plate (Piqueras-Fiszman, Alcaide, Roura & Spence, 2012). The exact way the food is presented is also important. It has been shown that food centred on a plate and presented in a neat, artistic fashion is more liked, considered more artistic, and diners will pay substantially more for it, compared to more asymmetrical or messy plating (Michel, Velasco, Fraemohs, & Spence, 2015; Velasco, Michel, Woods, & Spence, 2016). It also affects how much people consume. For example, food presented flat on a plate is perceived as being a bigger portion size compared to when the same food is stacked vertically, yet people eat less compared to its stacked counterpart (Szocs & Lefebvre, 2017). This type of research is important not only for the fine dining industry but also more widely for us as a society. Finding the optimal plating style that increases enjoyment but decreases the amount consumed has both health benefits and could potentially reduce food waste.

In the future I hope to explore how other senses affect our perception of food. The latest evidence from the field of sonic seasoning, the idea that music can enhance the flavour of our food, suggests that one can use especially composed music and soundscapes to accentuate certain components of the tasting experience. For example, sounds with characteristics such as high notes or staccato-like rhythms have been shown to enhance the sweetness of several foods and the sweet notes in wine (Spence & Wang, 2015). I hope to host a “Musical Cheeseboard”, an experimental cheese and wine tasting experience, on Saturday the 28th here at LMH with LMH Cheese Society, which should give me some insight on this.
 
I hope to undertake a DPhil program here at Oxford so that I can continue the work I am doing in plating and hopefully keep running different experimental dining events for people to enjoy!