At its core, eating quality seals the deal on the repeat purchase of a snack. Those of us in the industry might rank a snack’s hedonistic level—the level of pleasure consumption delivers. Snacks can also face organoleptic scrutiny, determining its positive (or negative) interactions with our senses.
In their landmark 1993 report published in Appetite, Robert Hyde and Steven Witherly used the theory of dynamic contrast to discuss why people maintain a preference for foods with sensory contrasts like light and dark, sweet and salty—in essence, the sensory psychology of peak palatability. Strong dynamic contrast equates to snacking pleasure.