We have all done this. We've gone to a restaurant and ordered something that sounded nice, but when the server came in with the dish, the first thing we said is, "Wow, that looks good". It 's like the way the ingredients were artistically plated on the dish had suddenly enhanced its taste. It 's like the way the colors of each of the items played with each other made the food even more appetizing. What's interesting is that in every such instance, we had tasted the food with our eyes, before our taste buds got a chance to do its job.
The main reason why people have qualms about eating healthy foods is because of this preconceived notion that all healthy foods taste bad, bland or rather uninteresting. But there's a way you can fall in love with eating healthy food and become a healthy food fanatic. Read on to find out!
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If we are to go by the current research findings, we will find that the easiest way to fall in love with healthy foods is through the art of food presentation, which basically is the arrangement and decoration of food to enhance its aesthetic appeal.
A recent study published in the journal Appetite showed that visually appealing dishes are rated to be more flavorful by the diners. This research was done on 91 subjects who were asked to dine in an upscale restaurant for two consecutive nights. Both nights they were served the same dish, comprising of sauteed chicken breast, green beans with toasted almonds and brown rice but way the food was presented was different on both occasions. The first night, the dish was neatly placed in a traditional manner with each food element arranged separately in sections. The second night, the dish was served in a more contemporary manner, with the elements artistically placed in a spiral pattern and a herb sauce drizzled along the perimeter of the plate.
According to the finding, the participants found both arrangements to be neat and balanced, but the chicken and rice in the artistically plated dish was found to be much more flavorful. The brown rice, which is healthier but less desirable for most people when compared to white rice, received twice as many positive reviews and less than half negative feedback on the second night.
Debra Zellner, a psychology professor at Montclair State University, attributes this to halo effect, which is where people subconsciously assign niceness or goodness to something or someone that is beautiful. It is the "what is good is beautiful".
If you have kids, you know how precisely this phenomenon applies to food, with how easily a kid can be turned off by food based on how it looks. "What's that green stuff?" they ask when presented with piles of spinach and iceberg lettuce just bunched up together. We often have to creatively make trees out of broccoli and use vegetables to create smiley faces to persuade them to eat it.
It is imperative to put effort into making your food creations more visually appealing. Once you do that, it will be enough to entice you and your family to try that healthy dish out. Rather than eating food for the sake of becoming healthy, it will become an experience that you will want to have again. Nature's beautiful gifts in the form of fruits and vegetables are not only incredibly good for us, but they are also beautiful, vibrant in color, full of different textures and flavors. Bring out the inner artist in you and paint away that white plate.
Image via Corbis
