What if you could eat healthier just by changing the texture of your food? Fun research shows that we all have preferred food textures and eating styles. Tell us your ice cream preference and we’ll tell you your texture tastes–and how to use it to your health advantage.
Which type are you?
Cruncher
You might be a cruncher if you like crisp apples, crunchy cookies, granola, and nuts. Crunchers tend to reject foods that are too soft to chew or are gritty or pasty. They are the fastest eaters of the bunch.
Ice cream preference: Nuts, chocolate chunks or something else you can crunch.
Chewers
If you’re a chewer, you really like to take your time and sink your teeth into foods like soft brownies and cookies. You might like to chew raisins and cheese cubes. Chewers are likely to reject foods they think are too hard and dry or sticky.
Ice cream preference: You probably like cookie dough, brownie or something to sink your teeth into.
Smooshers
If you’re a smoosher, you like to roll foods around in your mouth. You might prefer to smoosh foods that you could chew. Think oatmeal, custard, candies with soft centers, ripe bananas, and baked potatoes. You might have been called a slow eater as a child. Commonly rejected textures are hard, grainy, or chewy.
Ice cream preference: Soft-serve, all day!
Suckers
If you love hard candies, you might be in the small percentage that prefers foods you can keep in your mouth. You might like to suck the flavor out of things like orange slices before swallowing. Suckers tend to like to alternate between sucking and chewing. You probably reject hard, grainy, and semi-solid foods most.
Ice cream preference: You might prefer sorbet or ice cream with strawberry chunks.
Use it for good
Now that you’ve got your texture type, you can use it to make meals more appealing. For example, if you’re a cruncher who was diagnosed with high cholesterol, your doctor might have suggested eating more oatmeal. If this sounds awful, try adding crunchy granola or crisp apples on top. You could also stir in a spoonful of crunchy nut butter–or bake it.
A sucker might like a lettuce salad topped with mandarin oranges or grapes.
You might also watch picky eating children. Your little smoosher who loves fettuccine alfredo and cottage cheese might not care for crunchy breaded fish, but would happily eat a seafood pasta.
