Your utensil could have an impact on your eating experience, according to a new study.


Researchers from the University of Oxford found that the color of a utensil, kind of utensil and material of a utensil can all factor into how food tastes or feels in our mouths.


"Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears," study researcher Dr. Vanessa Harrar said in a statement. The findings could be used to "help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging."


The study, published in the journal Flavour, included three separate experiments. For the first experiment, researchers had study participants eat yogurt from different spoons, including a plastic spoon and a "heavy" teaspoon. When yogurt was eaten from the plastic spoon, they reported that it tasted "denser and more expensive," while yogurt eaten from the heavy teaspoon was considered the "least dense, least expensive, and as one of the least liked, but it was also rated as the sweetest."


For the second experiment, researchers sought to understand if the color of the spoon mattered. When study participants ate white-colored yogurt from a white spoon, they said that it tasted sweeter and more expensive, compared with pink-colored yogurt eaten from a white spoon.


And in the third experiment, researchers had study participants sample cheese from different kinds of cutlery, including a toothpick and a knife. The participants were more likely to say that the cheese was saltier if they ate it from a knife. Since most people don't eat cheese with knives, "this unusual behaviour might perhaps have caused the increase in perceived saltiness," the researchers noted in the study.


"Alternatively, experience may play a role. In cheese shops, samples are often given directly from the knife," they wrote. "Cheese shops often sell more aged, therefore saltier cheeses. Eating cheese from the knife may therefore have brought out additional perceived saltiness. Cheese samples given out at cheese shops or food stores are one of the few times where extrapolating from single sample laboratory conditions seem to mimic real life."


Recently, European researchers found that the color of a cup can affect the way a drink tastes, too. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Polytechnic University of Valencia found that hot chocolate seems to taste better when its drunk out of an orange or cream-colored cup, compared with a white or red colored cup, Agence France Press reported.


Also on HuffPost:






  • Use A Bigger Fork


    A study published in the <em>Journal of Consumer Research</em> shows that restaurant-goers who <a href="http://www.jcr-admin.org/files/pressPDFs/071311193612_mishra.pdf" target="_hplink">eat with really big forks</a> (20 percent bigger than a normal fork you'd find at a restaurant) eat less food and leave more on their plates than people who eat with really small forks.

    A possible explanation for this finding is that when people use small forks to eat, they feel like they are not making any big <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/15/using-a-big-fork-may-help-you-eat-less/?xid=huffpo-direct" target="_hplink">progress in eating their meal</a> and quelling their hunger pangs, <em>TIME</em> reported. In addition, the restaurant-goers who ate with the smaller forks and were given bigger portions of food at much more food than if they just had the smaller forks or if they just had the bigger portions.




  • Eat From A Smaller Bowl


    Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology shows that people eat 31 percent more ice cream when they eat out of a 34-ounce bowl, rather than 17-ounce one, ScienceDaily reported. Researchers explained that's because people eat about 92 percent of what they serve themselves -- so if you <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060803082602.htm" target="_hplink">serve yourself more, you'll eat more</a>.




  • Get Some Sleep


    Columbia University researchers found that <a href="http://www.thirdage.com/news/sleep-deprivation-may-increase-hunger_3-26-2011" target="_hplink">sleep deprivation can also lead to more calories consumed</a>. They found that women who only got 4 hours sleep the night before ate 329 more calories in a nine-hour period compared with if they weren't sleep deprived, while men ate 263 more calories when <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/sleep-more-lose-weight_b_857080.html" target="_hplink">sleep-deprived</a>.

    "It has an impact on cognitive restraint," study researcher Marie-Pierre St. Onge told ThirdAge. "High-fat food is tempting, and maybe on <a href="http://www.thirdage.com/news/sleep-deprivation-may-increase-hunger_3-26-2011" target="_hplink">short sleep you can't restrain yourself</a> as well, while on full sleep you can resist more easily."




  • Mind Your Environment


    <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/mindless-eating-environment-location_n_945712.html" target="_hplink">WHERE you eat your food</a> could also factor in to how much you eat and whether you're eating food even though you're not hungry, according to research from the University of Southern California.

    Researchers had movie-goers say whether they were regular popcorn-eaters or not, and then they had them eat either stale popcorn or freshly popped popcorn. The regular popcorn-eaters ate just as much stale popcorn as fresh popcorn, while people who didn't consider themselves regular popcorn-eaters ate significantly less stale popcorn than fresh since it didn't taste as good.

    "The results show just how <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/mindless-eating-environment-location_n_945712.html" target="_hplink">powerful our environment can be</a> in triggering unhealthy behavior," study researcher David Neal said in a statement. "Sometimes willpower and good intentions are not enough, and we need to trick our brains by controlling the environment instead."




  • Hide The Junk Food


    Research from Cornell University shows that we are three times more likely to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/see-first-eat-visible-food_n_984004.html" target="_hplink">eat the first thing that we see</a>, compared with the fifth thing we see.

    In that study, researchers took photographs of 100 kitchen cupboards and asked the owners to keep records of what they ate. Researchers also tried moving the food around in the cupboards to see if that impacted their food choices -- and found that it did.

    The research shows that "we end up being masters of our own demise, to some extent," study researcher Professor Brian Wansink, Ph.D., author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," told HuffPost.




  • Eat Using Your Non-Dominant Hand


    Research published in the <em>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</em> shows that <a href="http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/overeating-which-hand-are-you-using/" target="_hplink">eating with your non-dominant hand</a> can help you to decrease the amount of food you consume, CNN reported.

    The finding was part of the same movie-theater/popcorn study, where it was discovered that environment plays a part in mindless eating. Like in that experiment, researchers gave study participants either fresh or stale popcorn. They found that people who used their non-dominant hands and ate the stale popcorn ate 30 percent less than if they used their dominant hands, CNN reported.




  • How to Avoid Mindless Eating


    Food Think with Wansink: Economy-size snacks can cause you to eat more