Food & life · 2015
Does noise like an airplane cabin’s change how sweet and savory things taste?
In this experiment, simulated airline cabin noise made sweetness seem weaker and umami, or savory taste, seem stronger. The 48 participants tasted solutions at several concentrations both with and without the noise. No clear difference emerged for salty, sour or bitter tastes, and the study did not test meals on actual flights.
Details
The researchers tested whether sound could change perceived taste intensity. Each participant sampled solutions representing the five basic tastes under both noise and control conditions, so the comparison involved the same people rather than separate groups.
Participants rated sweetness progressively lower during the noise condition. Umami ratings increased, with a larger noise-related increase at higher concentrations. This was not a shift across every taste: salty, sour and bitter ratings showed no clear difference. Other sensory ratings and reaction-time tests also showed no difference between conditions.
The findings concern the perceived strength of taste in solutions, not whether people liked a meal or whether airline food is objectively worse. The abstract does not report the size of the taste changes or statistical uncertainty. The authors proposed that sound might mechanically stimulate a taste-related nerve crossing the eardrum, but this mechanism remains a hypothesis rather than a demonstrated explanation.
What do you think?
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