Pleasurable eating and portion size

Focusing on the pleasure of food makes people want smaller portions. While this sounds very contradictory it has proven to be so.

If the consumer is motivated by the fear of being hungry or achieving value for money they will gravitate to larger portion sizes. But if they are enticed by taste they are more likely to choose smaller, healthier portions. The first sips of wine or the first mouthfuls of food are the most enjoyable. The more you eat the less the pleasure in each successive mouthful.

People will choose smaller portions of chocolate cake when they are asked to vividly imagine the multisensory pleasure (taste, smell, texture) of similar desserts according to research published in the Journal of Marketing Research by Pierre Chandon, the L'Oréal Chaired Professor of Marketing, Innovation and Creativity at INSEAD and Yann Cornil, Assistant Professor of the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia.

Chandon and Cornil show that unlike health warnings, multisensory imagery does not reduce expected eating enjoyment or willingness to pay for the food. In fact, people are happier to pay more for less food.

In one experiment 42 French schoolchildren were asked to use their five senses in imagining the pleasure of eating familiar desserts and were then asked to choose portions of brownies. They naturally chose portions of brownies that were two sizes smaller than the portions chosen by children in a control condition.

In another experiment, Cornil and Chandon imitated high-end restaurants by describing a regular chocolate cake as smelling of ‘roasted coffee’ with ‘aromas of honey and vanilla’ with an ‘aftertaste of blackberry’. This vivid description made 190 adult Americans choose a smaller portion compared to a control condition where the cake was simply described as ‘chocolate cake’.

The study also had another condition in which people were told about the calorie and fat content of each cake portion. This nutrition information also led people to choose a smaller portion, but at a cost: it reduced the amount that people were willing to pay for the cake by about $1 compared to the multisensory condition.

A third study showed that people underestimated how much they will enjoy eating small portions of chocolate brownies. They expected to enjoy small portions less than larger ones, when actually both were enjoyed equally. This mistake was eliminated by multisensory imagery, which made people better forecasters of their own future eating enjoyment.

“Having more descriptive menus or product labels that encourage customers to use their senses can lead to positive outcomes for consumer satisfaction and health, but also for profits,” said Cornil.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/M studio