Cheezy poofs only taste good when all is right

In our early years, we are taught about the five senses: hearing, sight, taste, touch and smell. These senses (supposedly) make up our own personal toolbox for perceiving the world around us, and we are initially taught that our senses give us an accurate representation of what we perceive: cookies always smell like cookies, cheezy poofs always taste oh-so-good.

This idea that our brain perceives the world exactly as it is starts to break down when we are exposed to optical illusions: images that differ from what we think is real. One of my favorite ones is on the right: the A square and the B square are actually the same shade of grey, even though we perceive them to be different. As it turns out, neuroscientists are increasingly finding out that most of our senses, not just vision, are far from perfect when it comes to representing the world accurately. How we feel, what we are doing, what we just did, pretty much anything can influence our perception.

In a recent study about perception, researchers investigated the relationship between morality and taste. They started by having participants read a short story. Not everybody got the same story to read: a third of the participants read a story in which something morally bad happens (shoplifting, or a politician accepting a bribe), a third read a story in which something morally good happens (a gift to a homeless family, or a good Samaritan stopping a mugging), and a third read a story in which something boring happens (a student choosing a major, or waiters chit chatting). The participants were then asked to rate the morality of the story, and not surprisingly, they rated the stories exactly as you would expect – the shoplifting and bribe-accepting as being morally bad, and so on.

The researchers then pretended that the study was over, and that they were now starting a new study that had to do with product-testing. The participants were asked to drink a teaspoon of a mysterious drink (in reality, diluted blue Gatorade), and then rate the taste of the drink on a scale from very disgusting to very delicious. Can you see where this is going?

As you might have guessed, the participants that had read a “morally bad” story rated the drink as more disgusting, and the participants that had read a “morally good” story rated it as more delicious (the ones who got the boring story rated it somewhere in the middle). That is to say, the participant’s experience of a moral judgment significantly influenced their perception of taste. Seems like we can’t trust any of our senses!

The researchers discussed the results of this study in the context of how we process morality and so on, but I think it’s even more interesting to think of this as a prime example of just how much our brain puts a personal slant on everything we experience. I also see implications for issues like overeating and emotional eating.

Can you think of a time when food tasted different because of emotional reasons? Share in the comments!

Reference: The bitter truth about morality - virtue, not vice, makes a bland beverage taste nice. (2012) Eskine KJ et al. PLoS One 7(7): e41159.

Is Scooby-Doo to blame?

In this age of pre-prepared processed meals and endless hours on Facebook, it’s no wonder kids are getting fatter. In the US, obesity rates have doubled for preschoolers (2-5 years old) and more than tripled for children 6-11 years old. To explain this alarming obesity trend, many blame the accessibility and affordability of fast food. As a graduate student I often relied on cheap take-out to sustain myself. Luckily I quickly discovered that in Vancouver, sushi costs less than a McDonald’s meal, offering an interesting alternative. If my rent didn’t force me to live below the poverty line (hey, this PhD’s got to be worth something, right?), I would have thought this was heaven. In any case, I’m digressing. Cheap fast food is one part of the equation, kids drooling, lifeless, in front of the computer and the television is probably another part. Interestingly, a recent study suggests that another contributor to the obesity crisis is no other than… Scooby-Doo. And Dora. And Shrek.

The researchers were interested in finding out if putting the image of a popular character on the packaging of a product (this marketing ploy is called “character licensing”) is an effective way to sell food to kids. To test this, the researchers studied three foods: graham crackers, gummy bears and baby carrots. The participants in the study, children aged 4 to 6 years old, were presented with two packages of the same food item (for example, graham crackers). The only difference was that one of the packages had a sticker of a cartoon character (Scooby-Doo, Dora or Shrek) on it. The kids were then asked to say if one of the two foods tasted better, and if so, which one. They were also asked which food they would prefer to have for a snack.

So, does it work? Are children that oblivious to this obvious and dubious marketing trick (Scientific Chick challenge: Write a sentence with more than 3 words ending in -ious)? Absolutely. Overall, children perceived the food items with the cartoon on them to taste better than the ones in the plain packaging. This finding was statistically significant for the “junk” food (the crackers and the gummy bears). Not surprisingly, the children also indicated they would prefer the snacks with the characters on the packaging. As it turns out, character licensing is especially effective in children because they lack the ability to understand that the advertisement is meant to be persuasive.

You would think that all you would have to do to solve the obesity crisis is to slap Elmo’s face on broccoli and apples, but the fact that the character licensing experiment didn’t work as well with the carrots suggests this wouldn’t necessarily do the trick. The researchers only studied 40 children, a relatively small sample size to draw out any solid conclusions, but it’s still an interesting finding. I find it a little worrying that cartoon characters can lead to a more positive perception of the taste of junk food. I find it very worrying that food and beverage companies spend more than $1.6 billion per year on advertising for kids. I guess Ramen advertises for grad students and nobody gets worked up about that.

Reference: Influence of licensed characters on children’s taste and snack preferences. (2010) Roberto et al. Pediatrics, 126(1):88-93.

Eating Dolly

Remember Dolly? The first cloned mammal? The world’s most famous sheep? How would you feel about having Dolly for dinner, and I don’t mean to visit…

This week, I am writing about cloned meat in the food chain. We’ve come a long way in cloning techniques since Dolly (1996) and several farms in the United States are now producing cloned meat for human consumption. I thought I would review the literature and find an article on the safety of eating cloned meat. I’m not going to lie: I was biased going into this. I’m just not sure how I feel about a Dolly steak. As a scientist, however, I may not be biased in methodology, so I reviewed all the articles I could find on cloned meat as a source of food. Here is what I found:

• Cloned meat appears to be exactly the same as regular meat. Same nutrients, same properties, it’s virtually biologically indistinguishable.

• Animal models, when fed cloned meat for some time, seem perfectly fine.

• Animal models, when fed cloned meat and then made to reproduce, also seem perfectly fine, and reproduce just like animals fed regular meat, and the babies are fine, too.

Given the evidence, I have to tell you that there appears to be no hint of anything wrong with eating cloned meat.

So what? That’s it? We just drop it? The Food and Drug Administration was totally justified to approve cloned meat to enter the food chain in 2006? If you review the science, yes.

As someone who is ever careful about the quality of food, however, I personally have a few reservations. First, scientific reservations:

• Overall, I only found a handful of controlled studies.

• The longest-term study I have found looking at the effects of feeding cloned meat and milk to animals is 12 months. While 12 months is a very long time in the life of a rat (the species used in this particular study), that still may not be long enough. Especially considering we don’t actually have that much in common with the rat (except perhaps a love for food).

• The main study looking at how feeding cloned meat to animals impacts reproduction was done in rabbits. Is it me or do rabbits not normally eat much meat?

• While the data clearly suggests that cloned meat is just like regular meat, other scientific studies find that cloned animals have a higher fetal mortality rate and may be more susceptible to some diseases. Now there’s probably a reason for that, and until we find it, how can we be positive it’s not somehow affecting the meat?

That being said, proteins are proteins. And logically, cloned meat, as the evidence suggests, is likely identical to regular meat. The reason I would still chose not to eat it is more ethical than biological. With an ever-decreasing diversity on Earth, I can’t help but think that the mass production of cloned beings is a step in the wrong direction.

Because the laws on labeling cloned meat are still a bit fuzzy, what can you do if you would rather avoid cloned meat? One easy (albeit expensive) way to be sure is to go organic. In the last few years, both Canadian and American food authorities have declared that cloned meat or milk does not fit the organic bill. Another great way is to seek out meat from local producers, and get information on their practices. Why not visit the local farms? Road trip!

Sample of references: Effects of cloned-cattle meat diet on reproductive parameters in pregnant rabbits. (2010) Lee NJ, Yang BC, Hwang JS, Im GS, Ko YG, Park EW, Seong HH, Park SB, Kang JK, Hwang S. Food Chem Toxicol [Epub ahead of print].

Fourteen-week feeding test of meat and milk derived from cloned cattle in the rat. (2007) Yamaguchi M, Takahashi S. Theriogenology 67(1):153-65.

Cloning animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer-biological factors. (2003) Tian XC, Kubota C, Enright B, Yang X. Reprod Biol Endocrinol 1:98.