Eating with heavier cutlery makes food taste better, with researchers for the first time finding a direct link between the weight of eating utensils and people’s enjoyment of food.
An experiment with more than 130 diners at a hotel restaurant in Edinburgh showed that simply using high-quality cutlery, normally reserved for banquets, resulted in customers willing to pay 15 per cent more for their food compared to people eating the same meal with lower-quality utensils.
The research, carried out by a team from Oxford University, also showed people eating with heavier cutlery thought food was more artistically plated and tasted better. “It is likely that the positive or negative values that we attribute to the cutlery gets implicitly ‘transferred’ to our judgements of the food — a phenomenon that is often called ‘sensation transference’,” Charles Michel, who led the research, told wired.co.uk.
Michel, who is chef in residence at Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory, speculates that eating with heavier cutlery may capture the attention of diners more, increasing their awareness and enjoyment of what they are eating.
— Source: wired.co.uk
