Personality influences what we choose to eat

• April 29, 2024

The preference for spicy food or tastelessness could be a matter of personality , suggests a new study.

The researchers administered personality tests to 184 nonsmoking people 18 to 45 years of age, to see if they had a personality of search for sensations (someone who is open to new experiences and willing to take risks, such as with spicy food) or a more calm personality and less open to that kind of thing.

Then, the participants received a small amount of capsaicin, the component of hot peppers, and asked them to rate how much they liked spicy food as the intensity of the capsaicin increased.

Those with sensory-seeking personalities continued to say that they liked spicy food even as the spiciness of capsaicin increased, while those who had personalities more calm people stopped liking the food as the spiciness increased, according to the study.

The findings were recently presented at the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists, in Chicago.

"Theoretically, we know that the intensity of spiciness and taste are related in a linear way," the study author said in a press release from the institute. Nadia Byrnes, of the State University of Pennsylvania . "The more irritating a compound or food becomes, the less people should like it, but that's not always the case."

Previous studies have shown the link between the personality and the way eat . Such is the case of the investigation carried out by the psychologist Angelina SUTIN of the State University of the Faculty of Medicine and her colleagues from Florida at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , which reveals that fluctuations in the body weight could be related to changes in personality , due to the ability or not to control itself against external stimuli.

Video Medicine: How the food you eat affects your brain - Mia Nacamulli (April 2024).