make food taste better

Photo: Thinkstock

2 of 7
Start with an Instagram Appetizer
Before digging into, say, your blandish bean soup, look at a photo of something mouth-watering. Pizza, pastries, lamb chops, whatever, as long as it's highly caloric. Afterward, your humble meal may taste better than it would otherwise. Yes, really—at least if there's anything to a Swiss study that found that people enjoyed neutral flavors more after viewing pictures of fatty, flaky, crispy or gooey foods than after looking at low-calorie options such as yogurt and watermelon. The mere sight of fattening chow stimulated stronger activity in brain areas that evaluate pleasure—especially the orbitofrontal cortex—which made a subsequent taste seem better than it really was (a delicious illusion).