​Texture, Not Flavor, Is the Real Reason You Love Certain Foods

​And scientists are harnessing that fact to make healthy foods that people actually like

crave food textures
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The other night, I needed mashed potatoes. I had to have mashed potatoes. If I didn’t, it was totally possible that I’d keel over dead on the living room rug.

So, I ordered a single potato, courtesy of Instacart, and got to work in the kitchen. (All you need is some whole milk, butter, and salt. Here’s the perfect recipe.)

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“What’s with you and mashed potatoes?” my boyfriend asked me. He’s seen me embark on my mashed-potato missions no fewer than 152 times.

“I’m not sure. They just taste so damn good…” I paused.

But maybe it’s not the taste. I’m not big on French fries and hate baked potatoes, even if they are slathered in butter.

Apparently I’m a smoosher. One of the four categories of eaters out there, smooshers like soft, creamy foods that move around the mouth with little to no actual chewing. The other types include chewers (they are all about taffy), crunchers (once you pop, you can’t stop), and suckers (who, in my opinion, should be banned from quiet rooms), explains a recent Popular Science article in which the writer, Kendra Pierre-Louis, actually listed mashed potatoes as a food she refuses to eat.

According to the article, food’s texture, called rheology, is so intricately tied to our food preferences that it’s becoming a bona fide area of study. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation uses computational models to study how food moves and interacts will all of the surfaces of the mouth—technology previously used to predict tsunamis—to help better understand the connection.

Psychorheology is why some people will only drink H2O if it’s sparkling. The taste isn’t any different, but it sure seems that way, and all because of how a food’s texture impacts a food’s perceived flavor. It also explains why we think gelato tastes creamier although it actually has less fat than ice cream and why standard chips taste so much better than baked ones—despite the decades scientists have spent tweaking the actual taste time and time again.

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And therein lies the ultimate goal of the food scientists: to alter foods’ textures so that the healthy stuff tastes (or at least seems to taste) so much better than it does now.

Just picture it: In the near future, gluten-free pasta may not suck, kale chips might be just as addictive as Doritos, and I’ll be able to buy more than one potato at a time.

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