Kristen French in Nautilus:
Most of us would say we taste food with our tongues. Charles Spence has spent decades showing that we eat with our eyes, our ears, our fingertips, even our emotions. An experimental psychologist at Oxford University, Spence has learned that when we sit down for a meal, all of our senses come to the table, and some of them have unexpected effects. Heavier cutlery, for example, makes a meal more pleasurable, he has found, and flavors in space are often duller. Foods that sound better taste better, too: In his infamous “sonic chip” experiments, he found that the louder the crunch of your Pringles potato chip, the fresher it tastes, work that won him a 2008 Ig Nobel Prize (which celebrates real science with a side of humor).
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