Review of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence - Test 2

C1 Advanced · Multiple Choice Reading · C1 Advanced Trainer 2, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read a review of a book about the psychology of food. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

As head of a food research laboratory at the University of Oxford and a prolific author on the psychology of food, Spence is ideally placed to reveal recent discoveries such as: heavier cutlery encourages restaurant customers to pay more; ginger biscuits taste spicier when served from a rough plate; and strawberry mousse is perceived as 10% sweeter on a white dish than a black one. And Spence is not afraid of stirring things up. ‘The pleasures of the table reside in the mind, not the mouth,’ he writes, no doubt triggering much resentment among cookbook writers the world over. In fact, while his book, Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, is about how to create the perfect meal, it has almost nothing to do with the everyday practicalities of cuisine. Instead, this is the science of ‘everything else’; a blending of gastronomy, psychology and physics to probe the numerous factors that influence our perception of flavour, steer our culinary choices and make all the difference between a memorable meal and one to be forgotten. Top chefs and large food manufacturers alike have been quick to grab a slice of the action. As Spence points out, some restaurateurs have embraced multi-sensory trickery to boost the dining experience by, for example, spraying the scent of saffron over guests to enhance the flavour of lobster, or Googling their guests to tap into the powerful effect of personalisation. On a wider scale, and more worryingly, supermarkets label mass-produced food items with the names of non-existent farms, presumably to exploit consumers’ apparent willingness to pay more for a sense of authenticity. There’s another side to the coin. By colouring a drink pink, manufacturers can cut the sugar content, relying on our subconscious association between colour and sweetness to make up the difference. The positive implications for health are not hard to see, although Spence advises against giving this much publicity – if customers were in on the secret, he says, they would then claim to be able to tell the difference. Meanwhile, Spence believes that in years to come, our cuisine could be shaped by his own finding that making the crunch of a crisp louder increases its apparent freshness. ‘Playing on the sound of crunch might offer one way in to the popularisation of eating insects,’ he writes as he considers how to make insects – a great potential source of protein and a possible solution to future global food shortages – more appetising. Spence has a way with words and cheerfully leads the reader on a journey through the senses like a magician – an impression backed up by his liking for conjuring up imaginative dining experiences with top chefs and hosting multi-sensory cinema events. He skips from the importance of matching expectations with the taste of a dish to the revelation that people tend to link blob-like shapes to sweet foods – explaining furious accusations, not long ago, that a leading brand of chocolates had changed the recipe of a much-loved chocolate bar when it had, in fact, only rounded off its corners. Spence’s research is regularly dismissed by some chefs, who say that good food ‘should speak for itself’. Spence’s response to this is that, however much you may believe in the importance of good, simple raw materials, there is always a multi-sensory atmosphere. Even a chef who claims to let food do all the talking will go to the trouble of buying good heavy cutlery, he observes, because a plastic fork would mean a spoiled experience. Whether we like it or not, we are all affected by these inevitable manipulations. Spence’s point is that there is no such thing as a neutral context for eating. The flavour in our mouths at dinnertime is affected by the company we keep, by the music playing in the room and by where we sit. But eating is also affected by factors that Spence pays less attention to. He sometimes seems to treat human beings as if they were homogeneous amalgams of sense-organs, unaffected by culture or economic circumstances. Addressing the growing number of people who eat alone, he suggests: ‘Next time you get peckish, why not invite someone to eat with you?’ For a book on psychology, there is remarkably little here on the multiple ways eating can become dysfunctional. There are people whose problems with eating go far beyond whether their plate is the right colour. Gastrophysics is brilliant when demonstrating how much the environment of the table affects our eating, particularly at high-end restaurants, but it has less to say about what we as humans bring to the table.

good at making science accessible.

inspirational for other food writers.

dismissive of traditional cooking.

willing to be provocative.

In the first paragraph, the reviewer suggests that Charles Spence is

disapproval of certain dishonest practices.

concern about the use made of technology.

surprise at the extent of Spence’s influence.

admiration for the adaptability of businesses.

In the second paragraph, the reviewer is expressing

some information should be withheld from the public.

future food resources will depend on people like Spence.

developments in gastrophysics can have social value.

advances in science often have unlikely origins.

The reviewer’s main point in the third paragraph is that

the attention that he pays to detail.

the manner in which he communicates.

the tendency to keep his methods to himself.

the types of places where people often see him.

The reviewer likens Spence to a magician because of

a spoiled experience (line 34)

inevitable manipulations (line 35)

a neutral context (line 36)

the company we keep (line 36)

Which words have the opposite meaning to ‘a multi-sensory atmosphere’ in line 33?

identifying the type of reader that the book would suit most

illustrating a point made in a previous paragraph

bringing together the main ideas in the article

drawing attention to a weakness in the book

What is the reviewer doing in the final paragraph?

Review of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

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