Warm Up the Food to Comfort Diners

Most food items satisfy our hunger more if eaten hot than if eaten cold. We all know that, of course, including the researchers at Grenoble École de Management in France. What they measured was how, as a consequence of the greater sense of satisfaction, people are willing to pay you, on average, about 25% more per serving if the item is hot.
     The researchers also found that people consider heated items to be higher in calories than the same items when cold. This is caused by our subconscious strong association between eating pleasure and caloric count. The result of this effect is that people who place a high importance on health may not purchase as large a serving. By contrast, if the same item is served cold, people eat more of it, correcting for their perception that it’s less fattening. With this compensation, they’ll add an average of about 30% in caloric intake and almost 40% in fat.
     Although the studies were based in France, a culture which highly values the hedonic value of food, the participants were international, including from the U.S. The study conclusions appear to hold across cultures. However, nutritional information available for consideration at a conscious, rather than subconscious, level could be handled differently, depending on food culture.
     Researchers at University of Minnesota and France’s NEOMA Business School aroused national pride in a group of American and French consumers by showing them cultural symbols—the Statue of Liberty and bald eagle for the Americans, the Eiffel Tower and Gallic rooster for the French.
     All the study participants were then told about a fresh fruit mix and a piece of chocolate cake and asked to predict how much they’d enjoy each. For some of the participants from each culture, what they were told about both items included detailed nutritional information. The question was in what ways, if any, the nutritional information influenced the anticipated enjoyment of the items.
     The French consumers, with a heavy heritage of relishing the taste of food, were put off by being asked to process mundane details like health benefits or lack thereof. The predictions of enjoyment for both the fruit and the cake were significantly lower than among the French consumers not given the nutrition information. With the Americans, no real differences were seen between the two groups in predicted enjoyment.
     Attending closely to health benefits was, for the French, not cool.

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