Seth’s blog

I’ve done several experiments where I add a bunch of randomly-chosen spices to butter, spread the butter on saltines, eat the saltines, and then follow (or not follow) them with a piece of Wonder Bread eaten with my nose clipped shut.

In the previous experiment in this series, I made two spice mixes, A and B. After eating saltines spread with A, I ate a piece of bread. After eating saltines spread with B, I ate nothing. I did one trial per day, going back and forth between a trial with A and a trial with B. For example, Monday (A Trial), Tuesday (B Trial), Wednesday (A Trial), etc. Here are the results:

In an experiment just finished, I improved this design a bit: 1. I had trials with both A and B on the same day. (I made two new random spice mixes for this experiment.) 2. The first saltines of the day I rated “blind” — that is, without knowing what mix it was. Here are the new results superimposed on the previous results.

So far so good. The new results agree with the earlier results.

In this interesting video about losing weight, Paul McKenna, a British hypnotist, recreates a study in which people ate food blindfolded. In the study, they ate one-quarter less when blindfolded than when not blindfolded. This doesn’t impress me; nothing is stopping the blindfolded subjects from eating more at later meals. But it makes me wonder how not seeing your food affects flavor-calorie learning. It might make it stronger (you’re less distracted) or it might make weaker (the sight of food acts like glue to strengthen flavor-calorie associations — there is actually evidence for something like this).

While wearing noseclips while eating with others is too weird, wearing dark sunglasses might not be. And what about listening to music (for distraction) while you eat? My calorie learning experiments are continuing; eventually I should be able to test these possibilities.

Thanks to Gary Skaleski.

I made random flavors by mixing 4 randomly-chosen spice mixtures into butter. I spread the butter on 2 pieces of Wonder Bread. I used each mixture more than once — twice in a row (1st mixture), three times in a row (2nd mixture), four times in a row (3rd mixture). Each trial consisted of a flavor-calorie pairing — flavor from the spices, calories from the bread. Each trial also provided a rating, which measured the learning.

Here are the ratings of how good the bread tasted.

This was good. 1. The ratings started near 50 (neutral) each time. I’d like to have a large supply of flavors so that I can start fresh each time. These results suggest that randomly mixing 4 spice mixes provides this. The 4 spice mixes were randomly chosen from 10 spice mixes — so there are a lot of possible combinations. 2. The learning per trial was substantial.

More in the category Calorie Learning.

In the first experiment, I created a butter mixture with a random flavor and spread it on two pieces of bread, which I ate and rated.

To create the butter mixture with a random flavor, I took 1/2 stick of butter and heated it in a microwave until it was soft. Then I randomly selected four of the 11 Penzeys spice blends and mixed 1/2 tsp of each into the butter.

For each trial, I spread a thin layer of the butter on two pieces of the bread, which was at room temperature. I ate them in a minute or so. I rated how good they tasted on a scale where

90 = very good
80 = quite good
75 = good
70 = somewhat good
60 = slightly good
50 = neutral
40 = slightly bad

I’ve used this scale to rate food dozens of times. Sometimes the rating changes with successive tastes; if so, the assigned rating is the maximum.

After eating the bread I waited at least an hour before eating anything else or brushing my teeth in order to to eliminate interference from other smells.

I did no more than one trial per day. On most days I did a trial.

To find other posts in this series, use the Calorie Learning category.

These are the supplies I used in my calorie-learning experiments:

1. Wonder bread. I wanted bread with as little flavor as possible

2. Unsalted butter. Unsalted because the spice blends have salt.

3. Eleven Penzeys Spices spice blends. In particular, Baking Spice, Cake Spice, Chicken Taco Seasoning, Jerk Pork Seasoning, Poultry Seasoning, Mural of Flavor, Sate Seasoning, Southwest Seasoning, Sweet Curry (regular), Tuscan Sunset, Venison Sausage Seasoning. Each has 5-15 different spices. For example, Jerk Pork Seasoning contains paprika, allspice, ginger, cayenne pepper, sugar, nutmeg, black pepper, garlic, thyme, lemon grass, cinnamon, star anise, cloves, and mace. Baking Spice is a mixture of two kinds of cinnamon, anise seed, allspice, mace, and cardamom. Combining a few of them should produce a flavor unlikely to resemble any familiar flavor.