3 surprising ways restaurant music affects how we eat

A surprising factor influences what and how much you eat and drink in a restaurant: the background music. It’s true: The style, speed, and volume of music can affect your experience almost as much as the selections on the menu, influencing you to eat more, drink faster, and even choose certain items over others.

“Hearing is something that we just can’t turn off,” says Charles Spence, PhD, a professor at Oxford University, and author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating.

“Our brains are always picking up the background sensory cues from the environment and integrating them into the experience, whether we realize it or not.” Listening to music can cause both physical and emotional responses, making it doubly powerful when accompanied with food.

That spur-of-the-moment decision you made to splurge on an expensive glass of wine at the bar? Spence’s research suggests there may have been classical music playing at the time, which can send a subtle signal to your brain that it’s OK to spend more than usual on food and drinks. The way you plowed through your entrée while dining out over the weekend? The background music may have had a fast tempo, causing you to automatically increase the pace of your hand-to-mouth motions.

Surprised? That’s not all music can do. Here are three more ways that it can affect your dining experience, plus a few other restaurant-specific influencers:

Music can actually turn up the taste at mealtime. “You can play specific types of music to sonically season a dish,” says Spence. How exactly does this work? Spence’s research has shown that restaurants can bring out sweetness, spiciness, creaminess, or bitterness in a dish simply by playing matching music. (No wonder takeout never tastes as good!) “One cafe just opened up in Vietnam where they play only sweet music—think tinkling, high-pitched piano or wind chimes. The idea is that they’ll be able to add a little less sugar to their cakes and drinks.”