Perception is Reality. Any marketing student has learned it; any advertising professional has used it; any public relations expert has spouted it. They can create what doesn’t exist or intensify what may only be a trace, a ghost, a whisper of a presence.
Yet, science and medicine know it, too. The pain of a leg removed after a war injury. The itchy finger that was severed during an accident. And now, they realize that you can taste things that aren’t there, either.
Perfumer and Flavorist noted six years ago that there can be phantom aromas. Perhaps you smell the scent of a loved one on a favorite shirt. There could be the baked apples your mom used to make when you walk into her empty kitchen. Memories can shape the sense - including your scent with smell.
We know that food stores like it to smell like pumpkin or vanilla in the fall, as it promotes a feeling of need (not always hunger… men seem to associate it with “attractiveness” as reported in the NYT last December and many other places previously). Marketing people use scents to lure people to specific areas of the store, too - I used to do it as an assistant manager in retail, just like the store playbook said, though they likely didn’t have science, just a push of the scent of the month.
So now the “big boys” are beginning to scent your food to mask the “healthy qualities” such as lower sodium or lower fat. If you smell something associated with salty tastes (such as ham, in the article below), your mind will convert the scent to taste influences. Maybe this is how the Starship Enterprise got away with all of those replicator meals being deceptively “normal”.
By pushing the envelope of dimension and blending two usual things to mask that one is missing, a new normal can be created. Granted, it’s a bit duplicitous. But if it moves a generation toward the right end, can the means be justified?
Starting here, with the most elemental of sensations, where will it go from just a simple taste test? Maybe getting back to home-cooked meals and wholesome ingredients has more than just meets the eye (and nose)…
