Music for food. The choice of food in the cafe depends on the music

It is difficult to find a cafe or restaurant where no music would play in the background. In addition, this music, as they say in a recent article in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, directly affects what we order from food. The authors of the work observed the behavior of cafe visitors, who were given a choice of three types of menus: one was what was called unhealthy food (only fatty, fried), the other was healthy, and the third menu was neutral in that sense. Choosing food, people heard music of different genres, but at a different volume, quieter and louder.

It turned out that if the music sounded quiet, the choice often fell on a healthy menu, if the music was loud and then more often chose the unhealthy. The researchers offer the following explanation: quiet music has a calming effect, and therefore a person chooses the menu, having thought well; but loud sounds are exciting, creating a certain stress, and therefore the choice falls on unhealthy food. However, it seems that over the explanation here we must still work a little more.