Imagine that you are queuing at a buffet style restaurant for a
dessert. After standing for some minutes in the queue,you finally reach the dessert part, and have too chosse between fruit or chocolate brownie. What will you choose? And why?
This is more or less the setup that Marie Gaillet-Torrent and her colleagues from the Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation in Dijon tested , adding an extra condition... One hundred and fifteen participants were invited to test a buffet lunch, where they had to choose between fruit compote and brownie for dessert. But, over those 150 people, 75 were "unobtrusively exposed to a pear odour", ie the piece was filled with pear aroma, but at such a low level that one could not detect it. And, at the end, those exposed to this pear odour more frequently went for the compote...
An application for this, suggested in this study, could be to use "non-attentively perceived odour" to promote healty choices in self restaurant. It would now be interesting to check the sustainibilty of such an effect for returning consumer, or what happends in a traditionnal restaurant setting.
Impact of a non-attentively perceived odour on subsequent food choices, Gaillet-Torrent et al, Appetite, In Press, Uncorrected Proof (at the time of writing).
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