%0 Journal Article
%T Assessing the impact of the tableware and other contextual variables on multisensory flavour perception
%A Charles Spence
%A Vanessa Harrar
%A Betina Piqueras-Fiszman
%J Flavour
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2044-7248-1-7
%X Research on the topic of flavour perception has grown rapidly over the last decade or so (see Figure 1). In particular, the relative contributions of the various sensory cues (i.e., olfactory, gustatory, somatosensory, auditory, visual, and trigeminal) to multisensory flavour perception have been examined for a wide variety of different food and beverage items (see [1,2] for reviews). While a number of recent reviews have also highlighted the importance of atmospheric/environmental cues in determining what, how much, and how quickly, we eat and drink, and even how much we report liking the experience ( [3,4]; for reviews, see [5,6]), far less research has studied the role of the tableware on eating, drinking, and flavour perception. Below, we review the latest evidence highlighting the significant effect that the non-edible components of eating and drinking (e.g., the cutlery, plateware, glassware, condiment containers, menus, and atmosphere) can have on people¡¯s perception of, and response to, foods and beverages.Cutlery, by which we mean forks, knives, and spoons, has been in widespread use for nearly 200£¿years now (e.g., [7,8]). Traditionally, it was made from a wide variety of different materials, such as wood, bone, ceramic, iron, brass pewter, etc. Nowadays, though, the range of materials used for cutlery is much narrower, mainly limited to stainless steel, silver, plastic, or wood (for chopsticks and in eco-friendly coffee shops). This streamlining of materials has probably resulted from a combination of factors including: the ease and cost of manufacture/production, the ease of cleaning, environmental impact, and any taste transferred from the cutlery to the food.Laughlin et al. [9] conducted what may well be the first published study to investigate whether spoons made from different metals have noticeably different tastes. They measured the metallic sensation (or taint) arising from spoons plated with seven different metals: Gold, silver, zinc, copper, tin,
%K Cutlery
%K Tableware
%K Contextual factors
%K Flavour
%K Liking
%K Multisensory
%K Weight
%K Colour
%K Size
%K Material
%U http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/1/1/7