(Last Updated On: November 19, 2021)
Have you ever had someone else do you a favor and make you food? That’s not really a question, because everyone has had food made for them by virtue of not being born with the innate knowledge of how to cook. But back to food. Whether or not friends/family cut you a favor, or you just went out to eat, you might notice that food you’ve cooked for yourself tastes better when you’re not the one cooking it. So why do things taste better when other people cook?
Are You Just a Bad Cook?
Well, you might be. We don’t know what your meal planning looks like on the daily. Normally the example for “foods that taste better made by someone else” people use is the sandwich. Perhaps because everyone can make a sandwich by just slapping food between two slices of bread. There’s a low skill ceiling to making a sandwich, and even if you have two of the same sandwich, the one you didn’t make is probably still going to be better.
Sometimes food just tastes better because you know someone else made it. It’s a little special because your friend took the time out of their day to provide you sustenance. But that’s not particularly compelling, especially considering how widespread this phenomenon is.
Turns out, research into this subject was done some years ago. It actually overturned a longtime assumption, and when you first think about it the conclusion might seem counterintuitive. Imagining food consumption actually reduces the actual consumption of food.
Which sounds A: counterintuitive, and B: untrue. How often do you fantasize about eating some junk food, and then go eat it?
Probably whenever you go eat junk food, knowing how terrible it is for you. Studies have also shown that picturing a food you want will make you want to eat it, so your experiences are not unfounded.
Anticipation
When you’re preparing food, you are anticipating how it will taste for the whole time. The more you focus on how the food might taste the less you actually want it. You can think of it like you are “pre-eating” it. By the time you’re finished making your food and are ready to eat it, your brain is already bored of it. It’s the same logic behind your dessert stomach, which we’ve written about on the blog before. You’re not physically full–that’s why you made a sandwich in the first place. But your palette is satisfied, and you feel less hungry.
Leaning into that, this also determines how long it will take before you eat the thing you just ate again. Because you’re more satisfied with your food the more you eat (or think about eating it), each bite is progressively less cool to our fickle brains. The amount you enjoy the last bite of a certain dish determines when you’ll go get the food again. If you didn’t enjoy that last bite, you’re probably not going to get that dish anytime soon; even if it’s something you normally like.
Speaking of sandwiches, go look at some here.
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Raise your hand if the following scenario rings a bell. You go to a restaurant or a friend’s house and have the most amazing sandwich/soup/salad/pasta. You fall more in love with it with every bite and resolve to make it yourself at home. You pick up all the same ingredients, prepare everything just as it was prepared the first time you ate it, sit down to eat, and … bummer. It just doesn’t taste quite as good.
Yeah — happens to me all the time, especially with salads. I mean, what could I possibly be missing? I can see all the ingredients, so it’s not like there’s some secret addition (and don’t tell me it’s love). What gives?
Turns out, there might be a couple of reasons why food that’s prepared for you tends to taste better than the food you make for yourself. First of all, according to Carnegie Mellon researchers (via Forbes), it’s because anticipation of and exposure to the food (like when you’re preparing it) decreases the urge to eat it. Even thinking about the food for a while can have this effect, and actually seeing the sandwich getting made makes it somewhat less desirable than it would be if you had just ordered it and waited for it to arrive.
But another theory came my way on Twitter from OMG Facts, and this one, despite the fact that it doesn’t have as much research behind it, makes a little more sense to me. (I mean, sometimes when I’m making a killer sammie that’s been on my mind all day, I cannot wait to bite into it and it ends up being pretty freaking awesome, you know? You know.)
That theory states that the reason food tastes better when prepared by someone else, theoretically somewhere else, is that you haven’t been exposed to the smell of the ingredients, and since smell is so closely related to taste, it stands to reason that smelling the ingredients for 10 minutes prior to chowing down would lead to a noticeable loss of, for lack of a better word, pizzazz. Your tongue isn’t surprised by anything because, basically (and here’s where it sort of ties into the above), it’s been anticipating it since you started making the dish. Kind of gives you a new outlook on how special it is to make dinner for someone special, right?
Have you experienced this? Do the theories here make sense? And does anybody want to make me a Sparty’s Super Siesta Salad? —Kristen
Ever notice that food tastes better when someone else makes it for you?
In the fourth annual Food and Drink issue of the NY Times magazine, noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains:
"When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not 'preconsumed' in the same way."
At first blush, this explanation seems counter-intuitive. Studies have shown that picturing yourself eating a food you enjoy (perhaps chocolate) induces an increase in saliva and the desire to eat it. Similarly, imagining the smell of a cigarette increases cravings in smokers. So why doesn’t making a sandwich improve the taste?
Carnegie Mellon University researchers believe the answer lies in the fact that extended exposure to a stimulus (the sandwich) decreases the physiological and behavioral responses (wanting to eat it). In other words, seeing the sandwich get made over time makes it feel less novel and thus less desirable. A similar phenomena works with repeated exposure to the same food: a fifth bite of chocolate is less desirable than the first.
In a series of five experiments, the CMU researchers showed the more often people imagined eating a food, the less likely they were to eat it later. In addition, people who repeatedly imagined eating a specific food ate less of that food than people who repeatedly imagined eating a different food. According to the research, they ate less because they felt less hungry, not because they thought the food was less appetizing.
This is an extraordinary compelling idea. We will likely eat less if we make our own food and imagine eating it several times beforehand. Maybe we could call it the Daydream Diet.
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A scientific experiment has tackled an eternal question nagging city dwellers and busy parents: Cook, or order takeout?
To someone with a GrubHub addiction, the first part of the study’s findings may surprise. Taste tests showed that when it comes to healthy food, people like their own preparation better than the same recipe ready-made.
“The mere act of preparing foods leads to higher likings because people overvalue objects that they have put effort in,” say a team of European researchers in a paper published earlier this year in Health Psychology.
Their findings underscore what other researchers dub the “IKEA effect,” a reference to the Swedish company that sells assemble-it-yourself furniture. “When people prepare things—if they build, for example, a cupboard—people like it more,” says Simone Dohle of the University of Cologne. Dr. Dohle co-wrote the prepared-foods research paper with Sina Rall and Michael Siegrist of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
But the preference for self-made meals changes when the food is unhealthy. We like our own concoction less when we know ingredients like fat and sugar went into it, according to the study.
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To reach that conclusion, the three researchers enlisted 120 women, mostly German students, to taste two very different shakes.
Half of the participants tasted a low-calorie smoothie made from raspberries, milk and sugar. Some measured and blended it themselves, while others tasted one the researchers made ahead of time.
Those who had to mix their own rated the raspberry smoothie higher on a scale from “do not like at all” to “like very much” than those who drank it pre-made. They also estimated that it was healthier and had fewer calories.
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“Psychologists explain this as ‘justification of effort’ because participants have put all this effort into making a milkshake,” says Dr. Dohle.
The effect was particularly pronounced for those women who said they were on diets or had other dietary restraints, the researchers found.
In contrast, the other half of participants tasted a high-calorie milkshake of chocolate ice cream, milk and cream, which they either mixed themselves or received already prepared.
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Those who made the chocolate milkshake on their own rated it worse than those who drank the prepared version—evidence that people are turned off when they know exactly how much in the way of unhealthy ingredients is in their food, the researchers wrote.
The study lends credence to the avalanche of advice in countries with rising rates of obesity that people should cook at home more. It also shows that when people cook at home, they are more likely to lean toward healthier recipes.
“There’s this second process: If you prepare something, you become more aware of all of the ingredients you put into your food,” Dr. Dohle says. “Food preparation could be a way to foster healthy eating habits.”
Ms. Strum is a writer in New York. She can be reached at .