Colored Food And Gender On Taste Perception Of Spicy Food

The effects of coloured food and gender on taste perception of spicy foods

Evolution has impacted a multitude of mechanisms in humans with the purpose of increasing the likelihood of survival. One of these mechanisms seems to be the development of the relationship between visual input and taste perception. In a study by Shermer and Levitan (2014), colour intensities of spicy foods were shown to influence the perception of spiciness. In conjunction with the research conducted by Shermer and Levitan, the purpose of this study is to determine if the colour intensity of certain foods affect the perception of its spiciness and salivary production with the hopes of further understanding gender differences in spiciness perception.

Although Shermer

An example of the question is “this food is… very spicy, spicy, neutral, a little spicy, not spicy at all.” At the top of the questionnaire, participants must write their age, their gender and their sex. The survey was administered on a printed page, each was written in Arial font, size 12. The participants were given pencil, eraser and questionnaire. We used 2100 cotton balls, that were all new and used only once. We weighed them with the same electronic scale each time. Each participant had a total of 21 cotton balls, three per trial. The control group and the experimental group received the same treatment and the same conditions until they receive the foods. The food of choice here were spicy and non spicy salsas. Some salsas had red colouring and some had no colouring. The colouring was non-harmful, food dye. Some of the dyed salsas are more spicy that the non-dyed, but some of them are equal in piquancy to the non-dyed salsas. There were 2 non-spicy salsas, 2 spicy salsas and 2 very spicy salsa. One of the non-spicy salsas was dyed red as was one of the spicy salsas. The dyed piquancy salsa had the same level of spiciness as the other salsa of its category. The non-piquancy salsas were the same, although one was dyed red and the other wasn’t. One of the very spicy salsas was dyed red and the other one wasn’t. The experimental group gets both the dyed and undyed salsas, whereas as the control group only gets the non-dyed salsas. The latter, nevertheless, will taste the 6 salsas, they simply will not be