Seven ways to trick yourself into eating better

We might believe we are in control of what we choose to eat, but our senses are constantly manipulating what we buy and how much we consume. Here's how to turn them to your advantage.

You might not realise it, but you can taste with your ears. Just think about the sizzling of a steak or the popping of a soft drink can – do they set your taste buds tingling already? And how about the music playing the last time you at a meal at a restaurant. Did you notice anything about how it affected your enjoyment of the food?

"We all think we taste in our mouth. That's where, it seems, the flavour is coming from, but all the other senses are involved," says Charles Spence, a psychologist of food sciences at the University of Oxford in the UK.

In fact, before we even taste anything, our brains are making assumptions about food, from how it looks, sounds, feels or smells. This often happens without us even being aware. But the flood of information from our eyes, ears, fingers and nose plays a crucial role in not just how much we enjoy food, but also how much we end up eating too. 

Humans are far from being rational eaters – sensory cues can easily influence our choices. But research increasingly shows that we can use this understanding to hack our senses, nudging us to eat healthier in the process. I've been speaking to researchers to find out how.

When we shop, for example, our eyes play a huge role in the choices we make. The colour of a package, a brand logo and even how glossy the packaging is primes our brain for what to expect about the food inside.

And when food stands out visually, it is more appealing to us. One study found that participants selected photographs of healthy food significantly more often when the colours were boosted, even when an unhealthy option was right next to it. This taps into a concept known as "salience bias", meaning our attention is drawn to items that are the most eye catching.

We also gauge the health properties of food depending on the colour of the packing, says Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, an associate professor of marketing and consumer behaviour at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Brown, green and white products tend to be considered as more healthy whereas red, yellow and purple, or even "shiny" objects tend to be more associated with indulgent ingredients, she says.

One way of hacking this bias at home, says Spence, is to store biscuits and other sweet treats that come in brightly coloured packaging in an opaque jar. This can help to shield you from the colourful packaging cues that might trigger your desire for an unhealthy, unplanned snack.

Where food items are placed on the shelf is worth paying attention to – we all tend to take shortcuts and prefer items that are in closer proximity or directly in our eyeline. This is known as the "principle of least effort" and can be exploited by retailers to influence the food we buy.

Supermarkets tend place tempting products near the checkouts and more expensive products at eye level, which can cause us buy and consume products we hadn't intended to.

There are emerging efforts to tackle this problem. England, for example, banned foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) near checkouts, many European countries have introduced labels that inform consumers of the properties of food.

This can help consumers make more health conscious choices. For instance, when unhealthy snacks like sweets are removed from checkouts, it removes the temptation to buy impulsively. Other research has found that when fruit was placed near the checkout counter, it encourages consumers to buy more.

Next time you are doing your weekly shop, it might be worth looking at the less obvious shelves to see what food options might be hiding there for you too.

It isn't just our eyes and ears that influence our experience of food. How it is served counts too.

When desserts are served on white round plates they are often rated as tasting sweeter compared to the exact same food served on a black angular plate. A similar effect occurs with packaging shapes – with people preferring rounded packaging to angular.

"Flavour really is a multisensory construct of the mind as opposed to being a simple sensory perception in the mouth," says Spence.

How heavy the bowl we're eating from could affect how full we feel after a meal. One study found that consumers believed they would be more satiated when eating out of a heavier container before even tasting the food – though researchers did not test how satiated the participants actually felt. Other research has shown that if we believe food to be more indulgent, we feel fuller too.

"When people had just one spoonful of the product, they were immediately tricked into perceiving that they were going to be fuller," says Piqueras-Fiszman. Heavier cutlery has another positive effect on how we perceive the taste of food, with some diners feeling more satisfied by a meal when the cutlery was heavier, according to one study

Perhaps unsurprisingly, how food is presented on our plates also affects how much we anticipate enjoying the meal and can make lower calorie food more appealing. One study arranged salad to look like a Kandinsky painting, which led participants to rate the food as tastier and pay more for the exact same ingredients due to how they were presented.

Spence suggests adding a wide variety of colourful leaves and vegetables to a plate, which will in turn increase appeal and perceived freshness of a dish.

Sound is another hidden ingredient that can be used to change how we eat, a concept which has been dubbed "sonic seasoning". Slower music, for example, can make us eat slower (and eating slowly can result in eating fewer calories). You can even modulate how sweet or bitter you find a food – higher pitched music is associated with sweetness while lower pitched music brings out bitterness, even making sweet foods like toffee taste more bitter. These insights have even led some companies to play specific music to match or enhance the food. 

Avoiding distractions like the television or our mobile phones whilst eating can reduce calorie intake too. Listening to sounds of nature can also nudge us to make more sustainable food choices.

While sound subtly influences our food choices, playing with the structure of our food can dramatically reduce how many calories we consume. One way to do this is by maintaining the same portion size but reducing our food's energy density, or calories. Research has consistently shown that we tend to eat the same volume of food regardless of the calories it contains.

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"If you reduce the energy density within that amount of food, you'll still have satisfying portions, but you'll be eating fewer calories," says Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University.

She has found that individuals felt just as full when the energy density of meals was reduced by as much as 25% by adding pureed vegetables such as cauliflower or spinach into meals. Because the volume and taste remained the same, participants didn't notice the change and felt just as full, despite eating fewer calories.

Understanding that external cues regularly bypass how full we feel is important says Spence. "We rarely eat because we're desperately hungry," he says. Usually we are stimulated by what we see, hear and smell.

Consider for instance the "dessert-stomach" effect. Researchers have recently found that simply seeing a dessert can make us want it even when we're already full.

Taken together, it's clear we can help ourselves make healthier food choices by paying close attention to all of our senses.

I'm off to make some dinner and will put on some gentle slow music while I eat.

* Melissa Hogenboom is a senior health correspondent at the BBC and author of Breadwinners (2025) and The Motherhood Complex. She is melissa_hogenboom on Instagram. 

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