Summertime is often filled with outdoor parties and food trucks, meaning you鈥檙e spending more time standing up and eating. But if you want to actually enjoy your meal, researchers say you鈥檙e better off finding a seat.
A new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research finds posture impacts taste perception, with food tasting better when you鈥檙e sitting down. Lead author Dipayan Biswas, PhD, professor of marketing at the OB体育官网, is an expert in cross-modal effects and looked specifically at how the vestibular sense, which is responsible for balance, posture and spatial orientation, interacts with the gustatory sensory system, which impacts taste and flavor.
He found that holding a standing posture for even a few minutes prompts physical stress, muting taste buds. The force of gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body, causing the heart to work harder to pump blood back up to the top of the body, accelerating heart rate. This activates the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and leads to increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol. This chain reaction reduces sensory sensitivity, which impacts food and beverage taste evaluation, food temperature perception and overall consumption volume.