Does the weight of the dish influence our perception of food

By Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, V. Harrar, J. Alcaide, Charles Spence. 2011

90 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In many categories, weight has been found to influence how users perceive and appraise products. However, to date, the influence of the weight of the dish in which food is served on people’s perception has not been studied empirically. This exploratory study was therefore designed to investigate whether the weight of the container would exert a significant influence on people’s sensory and hedonic responses to the food consumed from it. Three bowls, identical except for the fact that they were different weights, were filled with exactly the same yoghurt. Consumers evaluated the yoghurt samples from the three bowls holding them with one hand, one at a time. Participants rated flavor intensity, density, price expectation, and liking using 9-point likert scales. Significant effects were found for all attributes except for flavor intensity. The effects on both density and price expectation ratings were highly significant. These findings are potentially relevant for designers and those working in restaurants, the hospitality sector, and food production, since the design and choice of dishes (or packages) of various weights could potentially be used to help enhance and/or modify the way in which consumers perceive and experience the food consumed from them.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Food Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/46f6e1a02cd099845640708befef2ada186fb7c1

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Food Science

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The taste of cutlery: how the taste of food is affected by the weight, size, shape, and colour of the cutlery used to eat it (2013, background): “This is the opposite pattern of results from [35] who reported that yoghurt was perceived as denser and more expensive when tasted from heavier plateware (see also [38]).”
Assessing the impact of the tableware and other contextual variables on multisensory flavour perception (2012, unknown): “[31] explored whether the weight of the bowl from which participants tasted yoghurt would exert a significant influence on flavour perception.”