{"id":264,"date":"2013-05-01T00:13:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T04:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=264"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:25:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:25:43","slug":"264","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/05\/01\/264\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet as Pie?–Food Memories and Their Inaccuracies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"orange-custard-_7\"<\/a>Think back to your favorite food.\u00a0 Is it sweet?\u00a0 How sweet?\u00a0 Do you think that you could pick this prized food out of a lineup of nine different versions of this food of varying sweetness, texture, and aroma?\u00a0 Maybe you think you have a discerning palate that will assist your accuracy, despite the fact that you forgot to actually take note of these factors while eating. \u00a0A recent study examines food memory and our accuracy at recalling certain sensory aspects of food that many of us take for granted when we eat. \u00a0Findings suggest we may not remember all the aspects of our favorite food as accurately as we might presume.<\/p>\n

Food memory is a complex area of study that psychologists still struggle to understand.\u00a0 There have been a variety of studies examining memory about certain aspects of foods.\u00a0\u00a0 Researchers have examined foods ranging from orange juice to yogurt, and examined sensory aspects such as bitterness to thickness.\u00a0 These results have not all supported one clear way people remember aspects of food, as people report certain food descriptors more accurately than others depending on the food.<\/p>\n

Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009) furthered studies on the accuracy of memory for different food aspects, asking participants to compare their memory of a cherry custard they ate with twelve samples (three of which was the original).\u00a0 The study looked at three aspects of sensory memory within the same food item: taste, texture, and aroma.\u00a0 Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009)\u2019s study examined incidental learning of food, examining what participants remembered about a custard they were not warned they would need to later recall.\u00a0 Participants instead were told to record their hunger throughout the study, eating a lunch consisting of simple foods and cherry custard and take note of their hunger.\u00a0 To ensure everyone ate the dessert, experimenters asked that participants were sure to eat all the food, to assist their supposed observation of participant hunger through the day.<\/p>\n

The next day,\u00a0participants returned and were unexpectedly presented with a variety of memory tests about the custard.\u00a0 First,\u00a0participants received a sample of the custard from the day before and nine distractor samples.\u00a0 The nine samples included three of varying sweetness, three of varying thickness, and three of varying cherry aroma to manipulate the sensory aspects of the custard.\u00a0 Eaters from the day before were asked to say if they believed they had tried the custards the day before.\u00a0 These lucky participants then tasted ten samples (nine distractors and one of the original custard) and were told to indicate if the samples were less, equally, or more intense than the original custard in terms of sweetness, thickness, and aroma.\u00a0 The tasters were told to rate the intensity of the different sensory attributes in order to gauge if how accurately they recalled the custard from the previous lunch.\u00a0 By making the tasters come in the next day, experimenters were able to see memory over a longer period of time and see how much sensory information people retained.\u00a0 The variety of sweetness, thicknesses, and aromas demonstrated a range of taste differences ranging from subtle (researchers determined the just noticeable difference for each aspect of the custard) to clearly different (double the just noticeable difference).
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Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009) found that participants tended to overestimate thickness of the custard but were more accurate in recalling the sweetness of the original custard.\u00a0 Surprisingly, participants were fairly accurate in rating the overly thick distractor puddings as such, despite their inability to actually remember the thickness of the custard.\u00a0 Thus people might not quite know which level of thickness the actual pudding was, but they know it wasn\u2019t as thick as the most extreme custard distractor.\u00a0 The majority of participants had trouble distinguishing between distractor and original cherry aroma custards, meaning aroma was not a telling marker for sensory memory (at least for cherry custard).<\/p>\n

It was sweetness that was by far the most accurately remembered.\u00a0 Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009) concluded that food memory differs across\u00a0different sensory aspects of food.\u00a0 Other studies have found that participants have a stronger memory for thickness when tested with yogurt and breakfast drinks, and a more accurate memory of bitterness when tested with orange juice, but a less accurate memory of sweetness for both foods.\u00a0 This supports the idea that memory of sensory aspects is actually influenced by the foods themselves. \u00a0Expectation may influence memory of certain aspects of food, unintentionally causing our attention to focus on important aspects of foods–such as thickness of a drink compared to thickness of a custard\u2014and influence what we remember.\u00a0 Our sensory memories might also be influenced by previous experiences with said foods, supporting evidence that our minds create an expectation for how a food should taste\/feel\/smell and this expectation could influence our responses on sensory memory tests.\u00a0 While I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever eaten cherry custard, in the Netherlands, where the experiments were conducted, this food is widely available and sold in stores so members of the study might have more sensory memories about it.<\/p>\n

Other studies that Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009) referenced discussing food memory research included the finding that the elderly have a tendency to perceive several attributes of soup as less intense than they remembered the original food to have been\u00a0(thus overestimating the original food), whereas young people underestimated the intensity of the original food.\u00a0 These results support the idea that age influences memories for food, as well as the foods themselves influence the aspects of said foods that are most accurately remembered.\u00a0 The correlation between age and overestimation of food intensity may indicate more than just the original food influencing memory or it may indicate changing taste buds or sensory perception, though this was not discussed in the article. \u00a0Perhaps with age and increased experience with food, we develop an exaggerated memory of foods we ate because we have tried so many forms of the food and created a memory of the ideal version of the food.<\/p>\n

Morin-Audebrand et al. (2009) also found that good discrimination between the original custard and the distractor custards (potentially indicating a discerning palate) did not indicate increased accuracy in the memory test.\u00a0 Thus a person might be able to tell the difference between two very similar samples of the custard, pinpointing that one is slightly sweeter or thicker, but not know which is the actual custard from the day before.\u00a0 The study also found the reverse was true; poor discerning taste buds for the different distracting custards did not indicate poor memory of the taste of the original custard.\u00a0 Thus a person may be capable of discerning the differences between a variety of custards, but unable to recall the taste of the original custard.\u00a0 Thus if I did a taste test between Haagen Daz and Ben and Jerry\u2019s vanilla ice cream, I might be able to tell the two foods apart and name the subtle differences, but not necessarily remember which ice cream is from Ben and Jerry\u2019s based on previous memories of it.\u00a0 So when someone asks me who made which one, I can stall and describe the differences in sweetness or thickness, but not necessarily remember which one tastes like Haagen Daz.<\/p>\n

These results demonstrate interesting disconnects between taste and memory, suggesting that food memories are far more complex than psychologists give them credit for.\u00a0 The results of this study raise more questions than they answer, but the idea that participants remember different aspects of a food more accurately depending on the food is one that many studies could expand on to improve our understanding of the overlap between attention and taste in memory formation.\u00a0 Next time, pay attention to the subtle aspects of your favorite food, see if it lives up to your expectation. \u00a0If not, maybe conduct a taste test and gather all different versions of your favorite food (post-finals celebration?) to see if you can remember just which version you\u2019ve been claiming as your favorite all these years. <\/ins><\/p>\n

Reference<\/p>\n

Morin-Audebrand, L., Laureati, M., Sulmont-Ross\u00e9, C., Issanchou, S., K\u00f6ster, E. P., & Mojet, J. (2009). Different sensory aspects of a food are not remembered with equal acuity.\u00a0Food Quality and Preference,\u00a020<\/i>(2), 92-99. doi:http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.foodqual.2007.09.003<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think back to your favorite food.\u00a0 Is it sweet?\u00a0 How sweet?\u00a0 Do you think that you could pick this prized food out of a lineup of nine different versions of this food of varying sweetness, texture, and aroma?\u00a0 Maybe you think you have a discerning palate that will assist your accuracy, despite the fact that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3974,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80215],"tags":[7681],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3974"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3808,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/3808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}