Can the shape, texture and colour of cutlery change the way food tastes?

Design
Academy Eindhoven graduate Jinhyun Jeon created this set of knobbly, bulbous
and serrated cutlery to stimulate diners' full range of senses at the table (+
slideshow).

Jinhyun Jeon, a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands,

made Tableware as Sensorial Stimuli as part of her MA thesis about the
relationship between food and the senses.
The project was inspired by the phenomenon of synesthesia, a neurological
condition in which stimuli like taste, colour and hearing are affected and
triggered by each other. People with synesthesia often report seeing a certain
colour when they hear a particular word, for example.

To find out whether this "sensory cross-wiring" could be encouraged and used to
enhance taste, Jeon created cutlery based on five sensory elements: colour,
tactility, temperature, volume and weight, and form.
The ceramic pieces shown here explore the effects of colour, with various
coloured glazes defining the tips of each implement.
Warm colours such as red and orange are supposed to increase appetite, says
Jeon, and are most effective when used sparingly.

Other pieces are made from stainless steel, silver or plastic, and the various
textures and shapes are intended to stimulate the sense of touch inside the mouth.
Above: photograph by Femke Riierman
The plastic pieces resemble glass, which creates a jarring sensation for the user
when the item's appearance is incongruous with its feel. "We tend to believe our
sight and touch would be the same, but this is not the whole story," says Jeon.
"The tools I created make us focus on each bite, feel the enriched textures or
enhanced chewing sounds between bites," she told Dezeen. "If we can stretch the
borders of what tableware can do, the eating experience can be enriched."
Other strange sets of cutlery we've featured on Dezeen include a set of knives,
forks and spoons that look like workshop tools and plastic cutlery that clips
together to form a small table sculpture.

Tableware as Sensorial Stimuli – 'Enhanced Tasty Formulas'

Cutlery design focuses on getting food in bite‐sized morsels from the plate to the
mouth, but it could do so much more. The project aims to reveal just how much
more, stretching the limits of what tableware can do.

Focusing on ways of making eating a much richer experience, a series of dozens of

different designs has been created, inspired by the phenomenon of synesthesia.
This is a neurological condition where stimulus to one sense can affect one or
more of the other senses.

An everyday event, 'taste' is created as a combination of more than five senses.

Tasty formulas with the five elements – temperature, colour, texture,
volume/weight and form – are applied to design proposal.

By exploring synesthesia, if we can stretch the borders of what tableware can do,
the eating experience can be enriched in multi-cross‐wiring ways. The tableware
we use for eating should not just be a tool for placing food in our mouth, but it
should become an extension of our body, challenging our senses even in the
moment when the food is still on its way to being consumed.
Each of these designs has been created to stimulate or train different senses,
allowing more than just our tastebuds to be engaged in the act and enjoyment of
eating as sensorial stimuli, therefore it would lead the way of mindful eating
which guides to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food.

Temperature: The temperature influences certain changes to the taste. Sugar

starts to taste sweeter at body temperature. Salty tastes become stronger when
the temperature drops. A sour taste will always be a sour taste when the
temperature rises or drops. Bitterness decreases as the temperature rises above
the body temperature.

Tactility: According to Dr. Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University School of Medicine,

it is generally known that the tongue map is incorrect. Sweet, sour, salty, and
bitter are perceived anywhere there are taste buds. When a strong sweet taste and
strong salty taste are mixed, it creates a completely new taste. When salty and
sour tastes are mixed, both the tastes soften. If the salty and sour tastes are mixed
well, a sweet taste can be created. If the sweet taste is stronger than salty taste,
the sweet taste becomes stronger. The different types of sensitive tactile spoons
could not only stimulate our tongue, but also lips and the palate. The exact effects
depend on the level of individual sensibility of our own tongue map.

Colours: Colours can increase appetite when using warm colours, such as red,
orange, and yellow. Comparing how sweet tastes between red and yellow with the
same level of sugar, the sweetness of the red (crimson, scarlet) coloured food is
stronger than yellow. Orange stimulates the appetite, because orange has been
found to increase oxygen supply to the brain, and stimulates mental activity.
Yellow increases metabolism so it is a good choice for dishes or tablecloths.
However, if the food and the table are arranged with warm colours, it could
decrease the appetite. The warm colours are most effective when used in small
amounts to create highlights.

Volume and weight: The volume of the hollow part of the spoon influences and
enhances the auditory sense of the sound scraping against glassware, as well as
our taste/appetite. A spoon that is 40g in weight can give us the sense of stability.
However, if you decrease the weight to 10g, then we are able to feel the weight of
food, making us more aware of the amounts of food that we are eating.

Form: Adding new elements to the general archetype of a spoon aims to give the
sense of comfort in hand, but also makes using it more intimate. Changing the
thickness of the handle can create more awareness when eating. Small amounts of
food can become heavy, or big amounts of food increase awareness about the
consuming moment.

How can we slow down the moment of one bite and taste enhanced sweetness,
while nevertheless consuming less sugar? 'Tasty formulas', which have been
created by Jinhyun Jeon, would help us to understand interesting ways of how we
consume our food with the tasty cutlery for enhanced temperature/tactility/
colour/volume/weight/form, interpreted in synesthetic ways:
SWEET ×36.5°
C = SWEET +++
SALTY ×< 36.5°
C = SALTY ++
SOUR ×36.5°
C = SOUR ×100°
C
BITTER ×> 36.5°
C = BITTER -‐

SWEET + (0.5% ×SALT) = SWEET ++

SALT ÷SOUR = SALTY/SOUR -‐
SALTY ×SOUR = SWEET +

10% ×(5R 4/14+5YR 4/14+5Y 4/14) = 2.0

90% ×(5R 4/14+5YR 4/14+5Y 4/14) = 0.1
20% ×R > 20% ×Y

5cm3 ×SOUND/ SIGHT = 10g ×TOUCH

1mm ×TOUCH > 10mm ×TOUCH (y=f(x)) ×TOUCH = Y