杯子顏色會影響咖啡味道嗎?

If part of your morning routine involves coffee, it's likely that you have a very specific ritual about which cups you use.

如果你早上習慣喝咖啡，那可能在挑選杯子時會很講究。

An Australian scientist has taken it upon himself to find out whether there's any scientific basis for thinking that taste is influenced by cup color—and it turns out, the color of your cup plays a big role in how you think your coffee tastes.

一位澳大利亞科學家親自研究認為咖啡杯顏色會影響味道的想法是否有科學依據(jù)，結果發(fā)現(xiàn)杯子顏色對味道的判斷有很大影響。

A study called Does the colour of the mug influence the taste of the coffee?, published in the journal Flavour, looks at how color influences the taste of coffee.

《Flavour》雜志上發(fā)表的名為“杯子顏色會影響咖啡味道嗎?”的研究研究的是顏色是如何對咖啡味道產(chǎn)生影響的。

According to the lead author, Federation University Australia's George Van Doorn, the experiment was inspired by a conversation with a barista who "reported that when coffee is consumed from a white, ceramic mug, it tastes more bitter than when drunk from a clear, glass mug instead."

該研究的第一作者澳大利亞聯(lián)邦大學的George Van Doorn說這個實驗的靈感來源于一次和咖啡師的對話，那位咖啡師“說用白色陶瓷杯裝的咖啡嘗起來比透明玻璃杯里的咖啡更苦。”

Van Doorn decided to find out whether there was any truth to the barista's claim—and in the paper, shows that there is.

Van Doorn決定要弄清楚這位咖啡師的說法是否屬實，而且報告中顯示的確是這樣。

The group tested three colors of mug: White, blue, and clear.

研究團隊測試了3種咖啡杯顏色：白色、藍色和透明。

They gave participants—the study had a small sample size of 36 drinkers—a café latté served in each color of cup, and asked them to rate it based on everything from intensity and sweetness to aroma, bitterness, and quality.

這項研究的樣本量很小，只有36名常喝咖啡的人，他們在每個顏色的杯里都裝上拿鐵咖啡，分給受試者，然后讓他們依據(jù)濃度、甜度、香味、苦味和品質(zhì)打分。

The color of the cup ended up changing their perceptions of only two of those metrics: Intensity and sweetness.

杯子的顏色只影響他們對兩個指標的評分：濃度和甜度。

When subjects drank their latté from a white cup, they rated it significantly more intense than the latté in a clear cup.

受試者喝白色杯子里的拿鐵時，他們認為咖啡的濃度明顯高于透明杯子里的拿鐵。

Why? Well, Van Doorn gives us a few hypotheses. For example, he points to other flavor studies that show how contrast is a crucial determining factor in how we perceive taste.

為什么呢?Van Doorn給出了幾種假設，比如，他說其他的口味研究表明，顏色反差是我們感知味道的決定性因素。

One prior study found that red strawberry mousse served on a white plate tasted 15 percent more intense than mousse served on a black plate, for example.

比如此前的一項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)白色盤子上的紅草莓慕斯比黑色盤子裝的慕斯味道要濃15%。

So for brown coffee, a white cup ups the contrast and thus ups our perceived intensity levels, too.

所以白色杯子與咖啡的顏色反差更大，我們感受到的濃度水平也就更高。