Does music affect meal duration and food intake?

Sticky Post February 23, 2022 Davis Anderson 0 Comments

Different emotion-arousing music doesn’t affect food consumption but both taking note of English songs and unfamiliar background music results in longer mealtimes, consistent with a study published this March in Psychology of Music. The findings are also beneficial for helping to push or decrease food intake in many clinical and non-clinical settings.

Music can do that by affecting and regulating mood states and increasing arousal by changing physiological responses (e.g. by increasing heart rate). For example, a variety of things is shown to possess a better arousing potential: loud music, music with vocals, the familiarity of the music.

As an example of this, slow tempo music in an exceedingly restaurant ends up in customers staying longer and consuming more beverages, while loud music is related to increased drink and alcohol consumption. The mode of music transmission (e.g. through the utilization of headphones) may also play a task when viewing the influence of music on eating behavior.

147 participants in Germany were divided into one among five lunch groups. Five conditions were compared: eating in silence (control condition), eating while taking note of music background music via loudspeakers, eating while paying attention to the instrumental background music via headphones, eating while taking note of pop songs with English vocals, and eating while paying attention to pop songs with German vocals.

The results showed no association between paying attention to songs with different emotion-arousing potential and also the amount of food consumed. However, the study found longer meal durations when people listened to English music and unfamiliar background music via headphones than while taking note of familiar German pop songs (although this just didn’t reach significance). No differences were found for transmission mode. Therefore, finding new ways to market or to decrease food intake may be beneficial in many clinical and non-clinical settings.