How sound and colour influence the taste of food

The sound people hear while they are eating food can change the way they think it tastes, scientists have discovered. In fact, researchers have also found that changing the colour of a food can influence the flavour 【小题1】 by   consumers.   Food   manufacturers   are   now   hoping to 【小题2】 the   findings   in   an   attempt to make their foods more appealing.

It was 【小题3】 thought that the sense of taste and   smell were the only human senses that played a role in experiencing flavour. Professor Charles Spence, a sensory psychologist at Oxford University, is a leading expert in his field. He believes that it is possible to change the flavor of food simply by exciting people’s sense of hearing. For example, listening to waves hitting the sea shore can make 【小题4】 detect seafood flavours.

Professor Spence has also discovered that 【小题5】 changing the colour of a food can influence the     way it tastes. He found that by changing a drink from yellow to a deep red, it is possible to make it taste up to 12 per cent sweeter than it really is. He said: ‘This colour has strong 【小题6】 with very ripe fruit.’

Flavour is not just as simple as the way something tastes, as all the   other senses come into 【小题7】 and some can dominate the way the brain   will 【小题8】 a food. Ice cream activates a part of the brain     which is just behind the eyes and is where emotions are 【小题9】. By melting, it changes its physical 【小题10】 and creates contrasts that continually keep your senses interested.

So next time you are in a restaurant or a supermarket, or just sitting down at home to eat something, think about whether your choices have been influenced by sound or colour. You may be surprised!

Kweichow Moutai, the company that makes the eponymous (同名的) liquor, is China’s most valuable firm outside of technology. Globally, its market cap has surpassed Coca-Cola, which had long held the 【小题1】 as the world’s largest beverage maker.

Apart from the Chinese diaspora (移民社区), however, Moutai is still 【小题2】 unknown overseas. Almost all — about 97% — of its sales come from China alone, according to its financial reports.

So how is a company that sells its products 【小题3】 in just one country now worth more than some longstanding global corporations? And can Kweichow Moutai succeed in 【小题4】 to non-Chinese consumers?

Moutai is named after Maotai, a picturesque small town in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou. This is where the company says its baijiu — distilled (蒸馏) from fermented (发酵的) sorghum and rice — gets the magic 【小题5】.

According to the Moutai Museum, environmental factors, such as the town’s climate and seasonal changes in the water of the local river, help give the liquor its unique taste and is 【小题6】 to the production process.

Known as the favorite tipple of Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China, and as the ‘drink of 【小题7】,’ it was famously used to welcome former US President Richard Nixon on his historic trip to China in 1972, and again in 2013 when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with his US counterpart, Barack Obama, in California.

Being part of so many major public events in China ‘has really 【小题8】 the brand in the national consciousness,’ said Cavender, the managing director of China Market Research Group.

Today, the brand is seen more as a 【小题9】 status symbol. Some customers buy it not to drink, but to keep as investments. Limited-edition cases are collected and showcased by international auction houses, like Christie’s, which says that some bottles can 【小题10】 more than $40,000 each.

“It’s also been a tremendous advantage during an economically tough year: wealthy consumers who are spending less on travel may splurge more on liquor,” Cavender said.

Yunnan Province, covering an area of 394,000 square kilometers, combines unique ethnic cultures, magnificent mountain scenery, rainforest, tea plantations, ancient towns and delicious food. Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La are always on the bucket list to those who haven’t been to Yunnan before.

In the courtyard of her restaurant in Xishuangbanna, Su Ying is preparing to give me a cooking lesson. But she has no pots and pans. Instead, she is going to cook the food in banana leaves and tubes of fresh bamboo on a small fire under an iron tripod in a corner of the yard.

Su【小题1】a mixture of wild vegetables with lemongrass and chili and wraps them up in banana leaves. She seasons sliced beef with chili herbs and spices and puts it into a tube of freshly cut bamboo. Another tube is filled with a more exotic delicacy: live bamboo worms, which she mixes with herbs and spices. Su then thrusts the tubes into the fire.

Even to many Chinese, Yunnan seems exotic. Its remoteness 【小题2】it much of the overdevelopment and pollution. The province is a global hotspot of biodiversity and boasts a【小题3】wide range of local ingredients. Most famously, the summer mushroom season 【小题4】some 300 varieties of edible(可食用的) fungi, including delicacies such as savory matsutake(松茸). There are countless wild plants and plenty of bugs and grubs.

On my trips to the province over the years I have dined on toasted barley flour and 【小题5】cups of yak butter tea (酥油茶) in a town now known as Shangri-la. In the north-east of the province I gorged on (狼吞虎咽) spicy hotpots. Even farther north I visited the center of ham production in Xuanwei, where I tasted delicate soups and stews. Here in Xishuangbanna. I was tasting the sour and hot 【小题6】and fresh herbs of the tropical south.

No one restaurant or chef could represent Yunnan. There is no single overarching Yunnan cuisine, but a selection of overlapping ones. And more than anywhere else in China, delicacies 【小题7】on table in Yunnan use a large proportion of the ingredients that are 【小题8】local and unavailable elsewhere. In an age when people can sample delicacies from 【小题9】anywhere in the world without even having to leave home, Yunnan 【小题10】us that for a real taste of local culinary culture, sometimes you just have to go to the source.