Food & life · 2004
Can changing the sound of biting a potato chip make it seem crisper and fresher?
Yes. In a human experiment, participants rated potato chips as crisper and fresher when the sound of biting was made louder overall, or when only its high-pitched components were amplified, compared with less-amplified sound conditions. The finding concerns perceived crispness and freshness, not evidence that the chips themselves became fresher.
Details
Participants bit potato chips with their front teeth and used a computer-based rating scale to judge either crispness or freshness. The researchers changed the loudness and frequency makeup of the sound participants heard while biting. Increasing the overall volume, or selectively amplifying high-pitched sounds from 2 to 20 kHz, made the chips seem crisper and fresher.
This experiment shows that the sound heard during a bite can influence how people judge food, rather than simply accompany the experience. Its scope is limited to the tested biting and listening conditions: the abstract does not report the number or characteristics of participants, or the size of the changes in their ratings. It also does not establish any improvement in the chips’ physical freshness.
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