This week's compost

1.      Health check: Do bigger portion sizes make you eat more?

‘If we’re served a larger portion, we consume more – as my colleagues and I show in our review of 88 existing studies that manipulated portion size and measured consumption. We found that doubling a portion leads to an average 35% increase in consumption. In addition to being substantial, the effect is robust, even pernicious. Larger portions lead to greater consumption even across conditions of bad food, where the portion size is not visible, and among people who should know better.’
The hidden question in this article is why anyone would want to drink 920mls of Starbucks coffee.

http://bit.ly/P1oPd1

2.      How sound affects the taste of our food

'The sound is what sensory science nuts call modulating taste, and the past few years have seen a boom in research in this area. Sound is the final frontier in food presentation. Restaurants agonise over menus, crockery, furniture and lighting, yet often any old CD will be stuck on for background music with nary a thought. However, now that we're starting to understand that everyone has synaesthetic tendencies when it comes to taste, sound is set to play a bigger part in our eating experience. Ben & Jerry's, for example, is considering a sonic range of ice-cream flavours, with QR codes on the tubs that will allow eaters to access complementary sounds via their phones.'
Which Sydney restaurant is going to be first off the mark with iPads and headphones and a hyperlinked menu ...
http://on.wsj.com/1qXiDzp

3.      Master the egg

‘Like that Rosetta stone, the egg, far more ancient, unlocks the secret code of the kitchen. Learn the language of the egg—understand completely this amazing and beautiful oblong orb—and you can enter new realms of cooking... An egg is an end in itself; it's a multipurpose ingredient; it's an all-purpose garnish; it's an invaluable tool. The egg teaches your hands finesse and delicacy. It helps your arms develop strength and stamina. It instructs in the way proteins behave in heat and in the powerful ways we can change food mechanically. It's a lever for getting food to behave in great ways. Learn to take the egg to its many differing ends, and you've enlarged your culinary repertoire by a factor of 10.’
I can’t resist it....I have to say I think the author is over-egging the egg.

http://bit.ly/1lumjr4

4.      Genetics link found in search for sweet strawberries

‘The first BMC Genomics paper, by the IFAPA in Malaga, Spain, studied 20 breeding lines of strawberries, mostly originating from California, and the second paper, from the University of Florida, took an aromatic French strawberry variety. Both showed that FaFAD1 was not present in fruits that did not produce gamma-decalactone.’
And it took how long to find this out? Bring back Mendel.

http://bit.ly/1i4i1ra