Many of our senses come into play when it comes to eating food, from seeing a nicely presented meal, smelling the aromas in a wine, tasting the flavors of a steak, and hearing the sound of creme brulee breaking apart.
As mentioned in See What I’m Saying, the author describes the experience of dark dining, where people dine in a completely dark room. He described the food as tasting bland, which was odd to him since it was an upscale restaurant. One study found that without the use of vision, people consumed much more food than normal without realizing (Greenwood, 2023).
An interesting detail about dark dining is how it creates a relationship between sighted and blind/visually-impaired people. As one journal describes it: “ These dark phenomena are successful precisely because they do not try to simulate the experience of blindness for sighted people. Rather, they provide a setting or stage for enhanced contact and communication” (Saerberg, 2007).
https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/24/24
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230411-what-dining-in-the-dark-does-to-your-tastebuds
Dear Diana,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Cooking has always been one of my passions and I remember always hearing the saying "you eat with your eyes first" but never really knowing what it means. I now have a great understanding that even though we don't "eat" literally with our eyes, our brains can perceive tastes and textures by looking at them. It how we know something is gonna be sweet or salty or crunchy. This just highlight's how our senses work together to create a cohesive experience and its why its amazing that our brains can adapt even if we lose a sense.