How to trick your brain into better eating habits

Charles Spence is a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, who researches the factors that influence what we choose to eat and what we think about the experience. His research highlights the extent to which those choices are shaped by the ways in which we engage with our food; in short, what our meals look and smell like, whether we eat them with forks or fingers – even the music we’re listening to while eating or food shopping play a role in how healthily we eat.

Use heavier cutlery or no-cutlery

Our brains believe there to be more food there than there actually is

• This has a profound effect on satiety (how full you feel)
• The brain can also be fooled by the tools we use
• Eating with our hands makes us more mindful
• Andoni Aduriz of the Mugaritz restaurant in Errenteria, northern Spain, has taken all but the fork away to make people “think more about how they interact with their food”

Frontload your first mouthful

Even when the flavour of each bite or slurp is slightly different, if it looks the same our brain tends to assume that the taste also remains the same.

• The flipside of that is that we can use this reaction to our advantage and reduce the quantity of unhealthy food we consume by packing as much of it as possible into that first meal.

Choose your music carefully – and turn down the volume

Loud noises trigger less healthy food behaviors

• Genre matters too
• Jazz and classical music increases people’s preferences for healthy savoury foods more than American rock
• The sounds of nature can influence our decision to make healthier food choices

Make eating as sensory an experience as possible

Anything you can do to pay more attention and eat more slowly, to be more mindful in the moment, will likely enhance the sensations associated with eating and mean that you are satisfied with less

• It could also help you make healthier choices – and enjoy those choices more

Make shared meals as engaging and memorable as possible

Get people involved in the process

• Serve up in dishes so they can help themselves
• Allow people to customize their plate with herbs or seasonings
• Multiple courses, rather than one big spread, creates “hooks for memory”
• Slow people down

Cook-and eat-with your eyes

We eat first with our eyes, and that dictates much of our experience.

• The appearance of foods has even been shown to influence what we taste when we eat them, so a big, beautiful salad boasting a variety of leaves and colors and textures won’t just look better than a handful of spinach, it will taste better.

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