#386: Appeteyesers

It’s a fact that food is more attractive (and will be judged tastier) if it is illuminated in the right way. This causes retailers to spend large amounts of cash in lighting fruit, meat and bread in stores (to say nothing of all those colour enhancing additives). Restaurateurs know that shining blue lamps on tables tends to reduce diners’ enjoyment of even the finest cuisine.

Today’s invention applies this knowledge directly to the process of eating. We could build lamps into the crockery (which would be ok, but hard to avoid backlighting making the food look uniformly black).

Instead, each knife and fork would be equipped with a small lamp and a variably-coloured filter. The lamps would act as miniature, widebeam floodlights. Each item of cutlery might be set with a slightly different hue and intensity in order that a more interesting mix of appetising colours could be played on the meal.

The lamps themselves could be automatically activated when picked up and switch off when set down. They might even be set to decrease their intensity over the duration of a meal, in order to help reduce the total amount of food consumed.