What psychologists can tell us about the way we eat

• Do left handed people buy less soup?
• How does cutlery or your plate affect the way your food tastes?
• Are you a super-taster?
• How does a restaurant's background music affect you? 

My favourite podcast, The Sporkful, aired an episode titled "Why Lefties Buy Less Soup", featuring an experimental psychologist who studies how people eat. Dr Charles Spence, a pioneer in Gastrophysics at Oxford University, talks about his research and that of his colleagues. They have some illuminating insights into how our environment affects the way we eat and perceive taste.

I was thinking about replacing my bland white dinner plates with a slightly fancier design, but now that I know that round, white plates are associated with sweeter flavours, I'm thinking my plain boring plates are probably just fine! Another trick for dinner-party throwing folks? Heavier cutlery. Apparently when the cutlery is heavier we think the food tastes better. Looks like I'll be replacing my cutlery instead.

I know that music sets a wonderful ambience for meals, but I often forget about the music when having people over for dinner in the rush of making sure the food is on time and the house is clean. Apparently restaurants invest massively in this type of research and I suppose I could learn from them too.

They found that classical music induces people to spend more on wine. They also found that ethnic music at an ethnic restaurant encourages people to eat more ethnic dishes and positively affects their taste perception. It's not just about the type of music, but also the pace of it. Faster music encourages us to eat faster. Chipotle plays faster music during the lunch and dinner rush to encourage faster turnover when the restaurant's busy.

Sound also affects taste. If the crunch of a food sounds louder, we think it tastes better. It might be an evolutionary preference, as we associate crunch with fresh foods. Now all those cereal commercials emphasising how crunchy a cereal is make perfect sense. Or why people like nuts so much!

For lefties buying soup, pictures of the soup on the package with the spoon on the right hand side of the people can make the food less enticing. They don't yet know whether that affects the quantity of soup bought though.

Aside from all the environmental factors that influence what we eat and how we perceive it, apparently some people are supertasters (about 25 percent of the population). They're more sensitive to bitter and fatty foods and are less likely to eat these foods. If you're curious, you could order tasting strips from this site to find out. I'm not really sure where I stand on the tasting scales. I like some bitter foods, and not others. I also like some fatty foods and not others. Might be a fun dinner party activity though to have all your guests test themselves! Or a fun gift for a friend.