Scratch ’n’ sniff patch may bring home the bacon for those swearing off meat
Professor helps devise way to allow people to ‘imagine’ they are eating rashers, leaving them ‘satisfied’
FOR lifelong meat eaters looking to kick the habit, turning down a slice of sizzling bacon can be as hard as giving up cigarettes is for smokers.
Which might explain the thinking behind the latest attempt to help people eat less meat.
Charles Spence, an Oxford professor, has helped develop a patch, inset right, infused with the smell of bacon, similar to nicotine patches. Scratching the patch is said to produce a whiff of cooked bacon intended to help quell the wearer’s cravings for meat.
The professor in experimental psychology, an expert in sensory perception and the tricks the mind can play on our sense of smell and taste, teamed up with Strong Roots, the plant-based food producer, to develop the patch.
He says it will allow wearers to “imagine” they are eating rashers of bacon, leaving them “satisfied”.
Prof Spence, the author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, said: “Scent can reduce food cravings. Our sense of smell is strongly connected to our ability to taste, therefore experiencing food related cues such as smelling a bacon aroma, can lead us to imagine the act of eating that food. Imagine eating enough bacon and you might find yourself sated.”
The patches are being tested this weekend on a number of users in Reading, Leeds, Liverpool and London who are trying to give up meat, with Strong Roots aiming to make them more widely available in the future.
Like all the best scientific developments, the patch is being promoted and modelled by a Love Island contestant, in this case Tommy Fury, last year’s runner-up. Strong Roots said: “Brits keen to adopt a vegetarian diet are about to get scientifically proven help to wean them off their love of meat. “It comes after a study of 2,000 adults found that between cigarettes, alcohol and meat, meat is the hardest to give up.” Samuel Dennigan, the founder of Strong Roots, said: “It’s Veganuary and we know that more people than ever are trying to adopt a plant-based lifestyle this year. However, the research shows just how many of them struggle with their resolution, so we wanted to offer a helping hand.” But some dedicated meat eaters voiced their scepticism. Graham Innes, 45, of St Albans, Herts, said they would only encourage him to eat more bacon. “If I can smell bacon, I’ll want to eat bacon – it’s very simple,” he said.