Vanilla yogurt makes us happy
New research published in Food Research International reveals that being pleasantly surprised or disappointed with a food product can actually change a person’s mood.
A team of researchers from Wageningen UR Food & Biobased Research, the Netherlands, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., Finland looked at what emotional effects eating different yoghurts had on people.
They found that eating vanilla yoghurt made people feel happy, and that yoghurts with lower fat content gave people a stronger positive emotional response. Their results also showed that even if people reported differences in liking them, yoghurts with different fruits did not show much difference in their emotional effect.
“We were surprised to find that by measuring emotions, we could get information about products independent from whether people like them,” said lead author of the study, Dr. Jozina Mojet, from Food & Biobased Research, the Netherlands. “This kind of information could be very valuable to product manufacturers, giving them a glimpse into how we subconsciously respond to a product.”
The results revealed that liking or being familiar with a product had no effect on a person’s emotion. However, changes in whether they liked it after tasting the yoghurt did: being pleasantly surprised or disappointed about the food influenced people’s moods.
Category: Features, Wellness and Complementary Therapies
