Whirdly has researched a topic of interest to theobromaholics everywhere. (theobromine is the active ingredient, a mild stimulant, in chocolate that makes it so great.).Often at dessert time after dinner I wonder aloud why every restaurant has a decadent chocolate cake or some other fancy named chocolate cake, when all it really is is chocolate cake (which is not a bad thing, in and of itself). I really love chocolate, and so I am drawn to discussion of the chocolate items on the menu. I also like being decadent yet believing in truth in advertising.
Crack food reporting comes to the rescue, apparently people report "that Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake tastes better than Chocolate Cake, even when the cakes themselves are identical." So now I know why every restaurant has a Double Decadent Chocolate Cake on its menu, to my dismay.
From the article in The Guardian:
"The industry's mistake, it seems, had been to listen to the market researchers instead of the food psychologists. People tell researchers what they think they want to hear, or what the respondents want to believe about themselves. But the little-trumpeted field of food psychology may be one of the closest things that the corporate world has to a window on its customers' souls. We know, thanks to recent findings, that people drink more than a third more fruit juice when they pour it into a short, wide glass instead of a narrow, tall one, and that people will eat more of a product if it comes in a bigger package. We know that people will report that a breakfast bar tastes worse if the packaging describes it as containing soy, even if it contains no soy, and that Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake tastes better than Chocolate Cake, even when the cakes themselves are identical. Above all, we know that just because people say they want to eat more healthily, it doesn't mean they really do."(italics mine)
tags: chocolate, theobromine, chocolate cake, fine dining
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