Choosing food

When it comes to eating, “The first bite is with the eyes”. Feeling the texture stimulates the appetite. 75-95% of the flavour comes from smell and the flavour is enhanced by “sonic seasoning“. Eating is a truly multisensory experience (see our blog for Multisensory processing and Food for thought: taste, smell and flavour.) And it seems the senses also help us decide what food is familiar and, thus, whether to eat it or not.

In this post, I have invited Associate Professor Suzanna Forwood, Anglia Ruskin University to reflect on how the senses affect what food we decide to eat or not to eat. Suzanna Forwood conducts research on the factors that determine our food choices, including available tools for healthy choices.

When offered a menu, most people do not seek out the least familiar dish for their dinner.  This is because most of us need food to be familiar for it to be appealing, and there are good reasons for this. From an evolutionary perspective, familiar food eaten in the past without any ill-effects is more likely to be safe this time, and safe food is essential for survival. From a psychological perspective, familiar food is food that we know about how filling or tasty it might be, and we need this information when choosing something to eat so we can match our current appetite.

When you reflect on it, eating is a profoundly unusual sensory experience. On the one hand, exploring food is necessary to gain the sensory information that makes it familiar: we don’t know whether we like it or want to eat it until it is familiar. On the other hand, eating food is bound up in a social contract: there is an expectation that we know what food we like and that we eat food we are served. This tension is particularly problematic for children who are still learning about the world and find it hard to express what they like. Their reluctance to like and eat less familiar foods can look like picky eating.

Sensory Education activities are designed for children and break this tension: food is not a meal but a game or classroom activity. The philosophy, originating in France and Scandinavia in the Sapere movement, is to offer children the chance to explore food in a structured and non-judgemental activity away from mealtimes. Children are provided with samples of foods, typically fruits or vegetables, to explore using all their senses. Golden rules for these activities are that no one must try or like any of the foods. Activities include variations of a single food or focus on specific senses. Food is discussed in terms of its sensory properties as experienced by the child with no expectation that the child has a preference. Sensory education therefore supports children by growing their familiarity with novel foods, as well as their vocabulary for talking about their sensory experience and communicating their preferences1,2.

The need for familiarity presents challenges when an adult loses part of their sensory world.  Eating is fully multisensory activity: we eat with our eyes, our hands, our mouths, our noses and our ears, and our experience of food merges senses. For example, what we experience as flavour combines information from tastebuds in the mouth and smell receptors in the nose, and what we experience as texture combines information from touch receptors in the mouth and sound receptors in the ear. Simply removing one sensory domain can alter how food is experienced. You can explore this for yourself by tasting a food while holding your nose to block smell or wearing ear defenders to block sound. Doing either of these will change the holistic sensory experience of eating the food: the food will no longer be quite so familiar and there may be a change in how much you like or dislike it.

It’s complicated to adjust to a radical change in sensory or motor function for many reasons but retaining dietary variety and pleasure in eating remains important for health and wellbeing. At a very practical level, then, Sensory Education might offer a structured method for supporting a process of re-learning foods in the new sensory world – re-experiencing foods from an altered multisensory perspective and re-evaluating what is familiar and liked.  Research has not yet explored whether Sensory Education can support adults experiencing sensory difficulty with their diets. We have tried co-developing Sensory Education activities with young adults, and the activities were enjoyed. The next step is to explore whether similar activities can be used with adults adjusting to sensory difficulty, such as visual impairment, or motor difficulty, such as recovery following stroke.

My father is that rare person who chooses unfamiliar foods – I think he enjoys the excitement when on holiday or somewhere new. And I remember thinking this was brave – like most children, I preferred familiar food and was amazed at someone who chose to eat something unknown. As it happened, when the food arrived, he would be presented with a regional dish or a local speciality, and when I tasted it, I learned that unfamiliar foods can be delicious and, in time, familiar favourites. It requires a kind of bravery to explore the unknown.

 

See our blog for Activities; especially 76-78.

 

Some suggestions for further listening, reading, and watching:

Dining in the dark

Eating for children with Sensory Difficulties

5 Sensory Tips for Picky Eaters

How to get your taste and smell back after Covid

I Can’t Taste Anything

Sapere

_______________

1Mustonen, S., Rantanen, R, & Tuorila, H. (2009). Effect of sensory education on school

children’s food perception: A 2-year follow-up study. Food Quality and Preference, 20(3), 230-240. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2008.10.003

2Reverdy, C. (2011). Sensory Education: French Perspectives. In V. R. Preedy, R. R. Watson,

and C. R. (Eds.) Handbook of Behavior, Food and Nutrition (pp. 143-157) New York: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-92271-3_11

Magic of the Senses

Sometimes the brain gets confused by visual information, in the same way as with sensory illusions and magic tricks (see our blog for Sensory illusions before and after vision and Magic without vision).

In this post, life-long magician “The Fantastic Kent Cummins!” reflects on how his brain is sometimes tricked when he has lost more vision. And on how this is similar to when it is fooled by sensory illusions and magic tricks. Kent Cummins has been a magician for more than 75 years. Amongst other things, using the fascination and fun of magic to teach children about their eyes. And winning the international Auditory Challenge in 2024. About 25 years ago, Kent was diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). AMD affects people’s central vision. For example, making it difficult for them to recognise faces and read regular print. Loss of eyesight is gradual: the first symptom is often blurred or distorted vision. AMD rarely leads to blindness.

“The hand is quicker than the eye. That’s why there are so many black eyes!”

It’s a very old joke…and it isn’t even based on fact. The hand is not actually quicker than the eye … unless, like me, you are visually impaired.

Losing one’s sight is not a laughing matter.

It must be magic!

I have been a magician for more than 75 years. (I performed my first magic trick in 1949, at age six.)

As a young man, I had better than 20-20 vision, which probably helped me learn and perform sleight of hand and other magic tricks and illusions. At age 60, I was diagnosed with AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration). For many years, it was just a diagnosis … I had not lost enough vision to even notice it.

But in my seventies, I started noticing the decreasing vision more and more. I needed stronger reading glasses, and better magnifiers. Fortunately, I am retired from the US Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, and the Veterans Administration (VA) provides all of my vision care.

The Magician with a Vision

When rolled up from the bottom and secured with two small rubber bands, the “Mr. See It-flyer” becomes a magic wand. (The Fantastic Magic Center)

When I became a full-time professional magician in 1986, I was hired by Texas State Optical (TSO) to be the third of three magicians who taught kids about their eyes through performing specially-themed magic shows. Our character was called, “Mr. See It, the Magician with a Vision,” and we also each had a small rabbit named, “Iris the Eye Bunny.”

During the next three years, Iris and I did more than 500 shows throughout four states. (Texas State Optical also had stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.) I wrote a song called “The Eyeball Rap” which taught kids about the parts of the eye, and I was well-paid … until TSO was bought out by an international conglomerate, and all of these programs were cancelled.

Ironically, nearly forty years later, I have become “The Magician with LOW Vision.”

I wear a button that says, “I Have Low Vision.” But for several years, I did not wear it on my magician costume, because as a magician, I should be all-powerful. Then last year I realized that even Superman had his Kryptonite. When I started wearing the button during my magic shows, and doing an Eye Chart trick while explaining why I wore the button, I discovered that kids related to me better … even sharing their own stories of needing to wear glasses.

Seeing is believing

Magic is typically a visual performing art. Although magicians will use all of the senses to entertain (and fool) their audiences, magic tricks are usually understood by the spectator’s vision. That’s why they came up with the expression, “The hand is quicker than the eye.”

But as I already noted, saying that is just another way to fool someone. The real secret is more likely to involve misdirection than quickness of the hand.

Auditory Illusions

A popular auditory illusion is that created by a ventriloquist, when they make it appear that sounds are coming from somewhere other than their vocal cords. When watching a skilled ventriloquist, we forget that the “dummy” is not real. It’s called suspension of disbelief, and it explains why we also cry at sad movies…even when we know that it is just a made-up story.

But ventriloquists do typically rely on the audience being able to see the prop being manipulated. A ventriloquist named Ian Varella was fond of blowing up a balloon and squeezing the neck of the balloon as the air went out, making a distinctive squealing sound. But the audience laughed when the sound continued even after there was no air left in the balloon! That’s right, Ian was making the sound with his mouth…not the balloon. (Ian was also an accomplished magician.)

The Magic of AMD

I see things which are not there…and sometimes don’t see things that are definitely there.

The first time I noticed this was more than ten years ago, when I was getting ready to exit my driveway onto the road ahead. I looked both right and left, confirming that I saw no cars in either direction. But just as I started to enter the road, a car came zooming by from my right, honking its horn and no doubt cursing at me.

Why didn’t I see the car? Because at first it happened to be in my blind spot, the portion of my macula which no longer provides information to my brain. So, the brain just filled in more empty road!

The next episode happened when I walked out of my front door to check the mail in the mailbox on the front curb. But the mailbox was gone. I was not too surprised, since boisterous teens sometimes had fun by driving down the street and hitting mailboxes with a baseball bat. But I was surprised when I blinked my eyes and the mailbox reappeared…just like magic!

No, I do not drive any more. You’re welcome.

A less dangerous but perhaps humorous thing happened when I needed to use a public restroom. I clearly saw the sign, which said, “MEN.” But as I started to enter, I noticed women exiting. That’s right, the “WO…” had been in my blind spot!

It has been fascinating, learning how my brain can fool a life-long magician!

 

See our blog for Activities; especially 73-75.

 

Some suggestions for further listening, reading, and watching:

Ian Varella – Ventriloquist

See What I See: AMD

The Fantastic Magic Center

The Magician’s Code – Kent Cummins