Sometimes certain foods literally sounds better

Have ever bitten into a mushy apple wishing to hear back that delicious crunch of a fresh apple? Or taken a seemingly fresh chip and then much to your dismay found it to be stale? According to a study highlighted in Rosenblum's See What I'm Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses, There may be more to the sounds our food makes than previously thought. While taste is our first line of defense against food we would rather not eat, sound may be our second line. The crunch sound feedback is generally a good indicator of whether we will like a food or not. Many children today will not eat anything that does not crunch and apparently you cannot blame them.
"As you eat, different foods make different sounds. These sounds reach your inner ears through two routes. First, there is the common way, via air disturbances that travel from your mouth out into the surrounding air and then around to your ears. Second, there is bone conduction: mechanical vibrations conducted through your teeth, jaw, mandible, and skull directly to your inner ear. The sound traveling through both paths can influence how you hear your food, with the relative importance changing as your lips open and close to chew" (Rosenblum, 2010, p. 106-107).
In an experimental study participants were told to crunch 90 potato chips and then discard them rating each one in satisfaction as they went along. Each time someone took a bite, headphones would send an either higher or lower pitch change to the crunch sound. All the chips came from the same bag and were all equally fresh. After a few people it was conclusive that no matter how fresh the chip actually was, the participant only enjoyed chips which sounded crunchier (fresher). This seems pretty straight forward and obvious but even chips which were crunchy were rated as bad when the crunch sound was dulled through their headphones. The feedback the participants got from their mouth was less important than the actual sound heard through the ears. More research is probably needed to decipher the difference between the sound we actually hear and the vibration signals sent to our ears through the teeth. This brings up some hope for better sounding health food which can entice us into eating it with sound alone.

Citing:

Rosenblum, L. (2010). See What I'm Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses. New York, NY: Norton.

For interesting articles and news, make sure and follow the link in the resource box below.

http://goarticles.com/article/Sometimes-certain-foods-literally-sounds-better/5143608/