"perception" news and stories

Two British researchers have published a study suggesting that hunger may relate to how men perceive different female body types, BBC News reports. The researchers surveyed 61 male college students coming and going from a university dining hall, first asking them how hungry they were and then asking them to rate a series of photographs of similarly dressed women of varying weights and body types. The half of the group that said they were hungry rated heavier women as more attractive, according to the abstract of the study, which appears in the British Journal of Psychology. The researchers now plan on reversing the study to see how hunger affects female perception of male body types.

Some scientists are trying to determine the role that sound plays in our perception of food, after the discovery that eating crunchy foods produces small pulses of ultrasound. Though doubtless everyone has heard the loud crunch of tortilla chips ringing in their ears, is the sound the deciding factor in your level of satisfaction with the chip? The argument about the tree in the forest could certainly be applied here. It is difficult to select a very crunchy food that does not produce a sound when chewed, or in which the taste could be perceived as an element separate from the act of eating it. Consider that there are many items that found along with food and are not eaten, though they would certainly produce a crunch if chewed, like the bones in meat. The sound does not enhance the flavor or the likelihood that the bones will be eaten. It is possible that they might taste worse if not for their crunch? Perhaps sound can be described as a property of crunchy foods, not as a separate element of the sense of taste.

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Researchers at Nottingham University are exploring the ways our brains respond when we eat fatty foods. The goal, in part, is to learn why certain foods are pleasing and then hopefully design more healthful foods that still provide the pleasure and satisfaction of fatty ones. Along with fat content, taste, texture and smell are all factors in how and why someone enjoys a food, so researchers are giving test subjects milkshakes with varying fat contents and examining their responses via MRIs. Researchers will also examine how the brain responds to fatty foods when they are eaten versus when they are delivered directly to the stomach through a tube.

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