Eating at your desk may distract you from tasting food
Busy, stressed workers are being encouraged to reawaken their taste buds by a leading psychologist after 60 per cent of people admitted to ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ tasting what they ate.
The majority of British workers admitted to eating at their place of work most days with just 13 per cent leaving their place of work for lunch – almost half described their lunch as ‘a means to an end’ to refuel their body.
Incredibly, with Britain a multicultural melting pot of global cuisine, awareness levels around food nutrition and healthy eating never higher, and the widest range of great tasting food and flavours at the public’s finger tips, it seems the ability to actually taste food is under threat.
The scientific research into the UK’s lunchtime eating habits was led by Dr David Lewis with scientists at Mindlab for food brand GLORIOUS!
Participants were able to only correctly identify 35 per cent of ingredients and most did not detect flavour swaps – 93 per cent were unable to discern beef from Chinese pork, 92 per cent couldn’t tell ham from tuna, 82 per cent could not detect Quorn from chicken, while 78 per cent could not distinguish pork from chicken.
Dr David Lewis said: “The abundance of great flavours and the range of food experiences have never been more plentiful in the UK, nor more diverse, yet our findings suggest consumers are lazy when it comes to tasting and appreciating their food.
“I doubt there’s ever been such a rich tapestry of food and flavour combinations at our disposal, yet we’re not savouring what we eat, which is not just a shame but a genuine waste of taste.
“Our lunchtime habits in particular show that workers consume food as a means to refuelling the body and most never, or rarely, taste what they’re eating.”
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