Jun 24, 2026 · 33 min · 12 segments
What makes us come back to the same food or drink time and time again? According to consumer psychologist Chris Lukehurst, it isn't taste—it's emotion. In this fascinating episode of Food Rebels, AJ…
Chris LukehurstGuest
AJ SharpHost
It's like I talk about this a lot when we are doing great taste judging and you are blind tasting all the time and the food comes out.
And so your initial, I was just thinking about it, my initial emotion at that point is kind of excitement.
Your expectation's really high, but you're already starting to judge it with your eyes and you're starting to judge it with the aroma or the crackle or whatever as someone's cutting into it.
And then these emotions will either be like, like you say, like maybe a joyful response, maybe slightly sad response because it's not what you're expecting.
It's exhausting because you are literally going up and down and up and down all day long.
And yet so many brands, I was at Food Matters, what was it, a couple of weeks ago.
Nearly all the talks that I went to were talking about Or we need to add functional ingredients into our snacks or functional ingredients into this.
And and there were scientists talking about how you can do that and some of the issues in doing that.
And then after they talked about that for about half an hour or so, they say, problem is it affects the taste.
Taste is important, but what really makes people come back is how it makes them feel.
Let's start from how do we want, what is the consumer looking for in their journey? What do they want in the way of an emotional journey? And then how can we deliver that through the sensory aspects of our product?
It's like I talk about this a lot when we are doing great taste judging and you are blind tasting all the time and the food comes out.
And so your initial, I was just thinking about it, my initial emotion at that point is kind of excitement.
Your expectation's really high, but you're already starting to judge it with your eyes and you're starting to judge it with the aroma or the crackle or whatever as someone's cutting into it.
And then these emotions will either be like, like you say, like maybe a joyful response, maybe slightly sad response because it's not what you're expecting.
It's exhausting because you are literally going up and down and up and down all day long.
And yet so many brands, I was at Food Matters, what was it, a couple of weeks ago.
Nearly all the talks that I went to were talking about Or we need to add functional ingredients into our snacks or functional ingredients into this.
And and there were scientists talking about how you can do that and some of the issues in doing that.
And then after they talked about that for about half an hour or so, they say, problem is it affects the taste.
Taste is important, but what really makes people come back is how it makes them feel.
Let's start from how do we want, what is the consumer looking for in their journey? What do they want in the way of an emotional journey? And then how can we deliver that through the sensory aspects of our product?
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