Ever notice that food tastes better when someone else makes it for you?

In the fourth annual Food and Drink issue of the NY Times magazine, noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains:

When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.

At first blush, this explanation seems counter-intuitive. Studies have shown that picturing yourself eating a food you enjoy (perhaps chocolate) induces an increase in saliva and the desire to eat it. Similarly, imagining the smell of a cigarette increases cravings in smokers. So why doesn’t making a sandwich improve the taste?

Carnegie Mellon University researchers believe the answer lies in the fact that extended exposure to a stimulus (the sandwich) decreases the physiological and behavioral responses (wanting to eat it). In other words, seeing the sandwich get made over time makes it feel less novel and thus less desirable. A similar phenomena works with repeated exposure to the same food: a fifth bite of chocolate is less desirable than the first.

In a series of five experiments, the CMU researchers showed the more often people imagined eating a food, the less likely they were to eat it later. In addition, people who repeatedly imagined eating a specific food ate less of that food than people who repeatedly imagined eating a different food. According to the research, they ate less because they felt less hungry, not because they thought the food was less appetizing.

This is an extraordinary compelling idea. We will likely eat less if we make our own food and imagine eating it several times beforehand. Maybe we could call it the Daydream Diet.

Satisfy your craving: follow me on twitter (@jbecher)

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When I first moved to California, I had the choice of renting a 700 square foot apartment for $650 per month or an 850 square foot apartment for $550 per month. Both were in the same building. The larger and less expensive one even had a better view.

I was puzzled by the bargain until the landlord explained to me there had been an “unfortunate incident” in the larger apartment. As a result, no one was willing to rent it. It was as if the apartment was contaminated.

This phenomena is what Wray Herbert calls the cooties heuristic, named after the imaginary disease that U.S. school kids think they will get by kissing members of the opposite sex. When it comes to the purity of our food, Herbert claims we think in extremes. Virtually anything added to natural food causes the food to have cooties, reducing its appeal. This explains why “nothing artificial” and “no additives” are such powerful marketing devices.

Once is something is contaminated, it’s tough for it to be considered pure again. Despite severe drought shortages in California, the general public has resisted using waste water which has been purified into drinking water. Instead, we would rather pay 20 times more for bottled water which has more impurities than the treated water. As psychologist Carol Nemeroff explained:

It is quite difficult to get the cognitive sewage out of the water, even after the real sewage is gone.

This cooties heuristic extends beyond food and drink. A recent study on emotional residue shows people report feeling sad upon entering a room that a depressed person has been sitting in all day – even if the person has already left the room. Because the new entrant has no idea the depressed person used to be in the room, it’s as if the sadness was passed as an airborne contagion. Similar effects have been shown with evil sweaters and haunted offices.

Intellectually all of this seems easy to dismiss. Eat the food, wear the sweater, and leave the room happy. But genetic wiring is stronger than logic.

My own experience is proof: I rented the smaller apartment, even though it was more expensive.

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