1. Professor Brian Wansink of Cornell estimates that we make two hundred food decisions a day.
2. So the question of what we like to eat confronts us more so than what we like to wear, read etc.
3. The what we like to eat conundrum presents two options: try something new or pick a favourite.
4. Which, as the psychologist Paul Rozen observes, depends on where we want pleasure to occur.
5. As in it would depend on whether we want our pleasure to occur before, during or after the meal.
6. Anticipated pleasure is greater if we pick a favourite; for we've already had it at some point before.
7. Remembering pleasure is greater if we try something new; for it creates new memories and favourites.
8. So liking circles around anticipation and memory; what we look forward becomes what we've had before.
9. Hence, the past and future feed thoughts, reflecting Blaise Pascal's maxim: 'The present is never our end.'
10. The present, expressed as living in the moment, is ambiguous for we're unsure how long makes a moment
11. But neither anticipation or memory is a reliable solution to answer how much we will like, or liked something.
12. For instance, eating a favourite meal every day for a while can alter the worth of how much that meal is liked.
13. Or the meals we ate during childhood may not longer be as desirable to the evolved palates of our our old age.
14. Or a meal we didn't like at the time of having it may be liked later as we distort our perception when recalled.
15. Which suggests, as observed by the writer Tom Vanderbilt, that the key to liking may be the fact that it's chosen.
16. Which builds on the behavioural bias of cognitive dissonance: our tendency to avoid post-decision choice malaise.
17. So much that we increase our liking for what we've chosen, while increasing our dislike for what we've not chosen.
18. In other words, as Vanderbilt articulates, as much preferences influence choices, choices influence preferences.
19. Hence, a reliable solution to the conundrum of what we like to eat is simply what we choose to eat; liking follows.