Food Tastes Better With A Touch Of Ritual

Want to improve the taste of your next meal? Add a touch of an ingredient not found in many recipes: ritual. Researchers at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota started to wonder about benefit of ritual after noticing that many people performed little rituals before eating. A news release from the Association for Psychological Science reports that when the researchers asked people to eat a piece of chocolate after following detailed instructions, and later to eat the same chocolate with no instructions, they found that those who followed the instructions enjoyed the chocolate more. Other tests persuaded the researchers that the rituals must be performed by the person eating the food– just watching someone else doesn’t do do the trick. Wait there’s more: the ritual food enhancement even works with carrots. Case closed.