HAVE you ever noticed that food could taste different when you are thousands of metres above the ground, or that a relatively simple dish can feel more satisfying when it is beautifully presented?
We often talk about “taste” as though it happens entirely on our tongue. In reality, eating is a multisensory experience.
Airline food is a good example. Lower cabin pressure and humidity can affect our perception of aroma and taste, while background noise can influence the eating experience.
Restaurants demonstrate something similar, with presentation, aroma, lighting and ambience shaping our expectations and enjoyment before we even taste the food.
More importantly, this understanding can be applied to how we approach healthier eating. If our senses and surroundings influence how much we enjoy food, understanding these factors could help make healthier choices more appealing.
This is something I encourage students to consider when developing food products.
Reducing sugar, increasing fibre, incorporating vegetables and boosting protein are all important considerations. But nutritional value is only part of the equation.
Students also need to consider whether people will actually enjoy eating what they create.
Changing an ingredient can alter not only nutritional value, but also colour, aroma, flavour and texture. A product may look impressive nutritionally, but if consumers try it once and do not want it again, its ability to encourage healthier eating is limited.
Learning to balance nutrition with the sensory experience is therefore an important part of developing food that works in the real world.
I saw this firsthand through Nourish-U, a Taylor’s Impact Lab initiative that gives students the opportunity to apply food development principles to create healthier food options for children.
Knowing that vegetables might not immediately excite them, we began with the eating experience rather than telling them what was healthy.
We developed nuggets containing okara, the nutritious pulp left from making soy milk, together with mushroom, carrot and onion, and presented them in playful animal shapes.
The children tried them and, importantly, enjoyed them. Only afterwards did we tell them what was inside. Their surprise was summed up in one simple word, “Sedap!”
What mattered was that the children had associated ingredients they might not ordinarily choose with an enjoyable eating experience. It reinforced how positive experiences in food education can create curiosity and challenge assumptions about foods children think they dislike.
The same lesson applies when educating future food professionals. Knowing what makes a product nutritious is essential, but students must also understand the people they are designing it for.
Food choices are influenced by pleasure, familiarity, culture and experience as much as by knowledge of nutrition.
Food education should therefore go beyond teaching what constitutes a healthier choice. It can help students understand why people make the food choices they do and how sensory science can be applied to create better alternatives.
For future food developers, educators and others working to improve the way we eat, making food healthier should not come at the expense of making it enjoyable.
If we can teach future food professionals to bring nutrition and enjoyment closer together, healthier eating may feel less like a compromise and more like a choice people genuinely want to make.
Tracy Wong Fang Lian is a lecturer at Taylor’s Culinary Institute, Faculty of Social Science & Leisure Management, Taylor’s University, specialising in sensory science, food product development and food education. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
