Original title: Reviewing Physiological Measures of Implicit Consumer Response to Food
People can say how much they like a food, but their bodies also react while they smell or eat it. Researchers measure signals such as sweating, heart rate, pupil size, facial expressions, and brain activity. These signals vary across foods, but they do not consistently match what people say they like. Combining body measurements with self-reports may help explain how sensing food connects to pleasure and choice.
Imagine tasting a new dish while someone asks whether you like it. You can give an answer, but your face or body may react differently, and one reaction alone may not explain what you think. In this paper, your spoken answer is the self-report, while your body and brain reactions are other clues; putting them together may help explain food pleasure and choice.
Food researchers and companies want to understand why people choose and enjoy certain foods. Physiological and brain measures can reveal reactions that self-reports miss, but the review finds their link to stated liking varies with the product, study setup, and context.
The review reports that links between autonomic signals and stated liking vary with the food, study protocol, and context. It does not establish that any one measure reliably predicts liking or choice, or that combining measures has already been shown to improve predictions.
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Reviewing Physiological Measures of Implicit Consumer Response to Food — Andrés Viadel, Laura Laguna, Amparo Tárrega — Foods — doi:10.3390/foods15193551
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.