Why people eat rice with hands in most parts of India? Because directly touching the food makes the experience of eating more enjoyable, say researchers.
Health Tips: Eating your Food with Hands to Enjoy It MoreThe study, published in the Journal of Retailing, revealed that when high self-control individuals touch food directly with their hands, compared to when they use cutlery, they not only find what they eat - tastier and more satisfying - but also eat more.
“Our results suggest that for people who regularly control their food consumption, direct touch triggers an enhanced sensory response, making food more desirable and appealing,” said study researcher Adriana Madzharov from Stevens Institute of Technology in the US.
In her first experiment, Madzharov had 45 undergraduate students visually inspect and evaluate a cube of Muenster cheese, hold it before eating it and then asked them to answer questions about their eating behavior.
Half of the participants used a pick and sampled a cheese cube with an appetizer while the other half sampled a cheese cube without pick.
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