Summary: Researchers report that ambient food aromas can reduce cravings and help satisfy appetite.
Source: USF.
When the smell of fried or baked comfort food brushes past you briefly, it can increase the urge to order a high-calorie meal. But when that same aroma surrounds you for longer—about two minutes or more—you may feel less tempted and instead choose a healthier option like fruit.
A recent paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that ambient food scent can do more than simply attract attention: it can partially satisfy the brain’s reward system. Because sensory pleasure signals from smell and taste share neural pathways, olfactory stimulation alone may reduce the desire to consume indulgent foods.
“Ambient scent can be a powerful tool to resist cravings for indulgent foods,” said lead author Dipayan Biswas, PhD, a marketing professor at the University of South Florida College of Business. “Subtle sensory cues such as scent can sometimes influence the food choices of children and adults more effectively than restrictive policies.”
Biswas and his colleagues tested how exposure duration affects food choice by releasing scents covertly with a small nebulizer device in a series of lab and field experiments. They compared indulgent scents (for example, cookies or pizza) with non-indulgent scents (strawberries or apples) and with no added scent.
Results showed a clear time-dependent effect. Brief exposures—typically under 30 seconds—to the aroma of an indulgent item made participants more likely to want that item. But when exposure lasted longer than two minutes, the indulgent scent tended to reduce desire for the corresponding high-calorie food and increased selections of healthier alternatives such as fruit. The same pattern appeared when the researchers swapped cookie scent for strawberry scent and pizza scent for apple scent.
The researchers explain this outcome through a mechanism they call cross-modal sensory compensation. Extended inhalation of a rewarding scent appears to activate pleasure-related brain circuits enough to partially satisfy the appetite, so the urge to consume the food decreases. In contrast, brief scent exposures act as attention-grabbing cues that amplify craving rather than satisfy it.
Because many non-indulgent foods emit little ambient aroma, they generally fail to create the same reward association and therefore have less influence over purchasing choices. Biswas notes that other environmental factors—like lighting and background music—also shape food selection, but this study is among the first to demonstrate that one sensory modality (smell) can compensate for another (taste) when exposure is prolonged.
Source: Tina Meketa, University of South Florida
Publisher: NeuroscienceNews.com summary of the research
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com (public domain)
Original Research: “The Smell of Healthy Choices: Cross-Modal Sensory Compensation Effects of Ambient Scent on Food Purchases” by Dipayan Biswas and Courtney Szocs, Journal of Marketing Research (published January 4, 2019). DOI: 10.1177/0022243718820585.
You may cite this summary by referencing the University of South Florida and the original Journal of Marketing Research study by Biswas and Szocs (2019).
Abstract (summary)
The Smell of Healthy Choices: Cross-Modal Sensory Compensation Effects of Ambient Scent on Food Purchases
Retail and service managers increasingly use ambient scent as a strategic tool, with food-related fragrances especially common. This research investigates how food-related ambient scents influence the choices of children and adults. Across several experiments, including field studies in a supermarket and a middle school cafeteria, the authors find that prolonged exposure (more than two minutes) to an indulgent food scent (for example, cookie aroma) reduces the purchase and selection of unhealthy foods compared with either no scent or exposure to a non-indulgent scent (for example, strawberry aroma). The proposed explanation is cross-modal sensory compensation: sustained exposure to a rewarding olfactory cue triggers pleasure responses that reduce the desire for actual consumption of indulgent foods. Importantly, the effects reverse when exposure is very brief (less than 30 seconds), which tends to increase craving. While prior work has demonstrated cross-modal influences among senses, this study introduces the concept that olfactory stimuli can compensate for gustatory desire when experienced for an extended period.