Place setting: does where you eat matter?

Research suggests that it is better for you to eat at a table, and that the colour red suppresses your appetite. Photograph: cstar55/Getty Images

Gleaming crockery, polished wineglasses – I was brought up to believe that food should be eaten at a dining table on proper chairs, with proper mats and proper cutlery – anything less was just not cutting it. As an adult however I spend more time wolfing down food in front of the telly, and I'm not on my own. One recent survey claimed that a third of Britons eat at a dining table only a few times a year. And more's the pity: there is a stack of research to suggest that it's not just what we eat but where we eat that counts.

Matters of finesse aside – it's hard to look your best with all that gravy spilling down your pyjamas – there are health considerations too. Eating in front of the TV, of course, is bad – does anybody not know this? Cue acres of research to claim that not only does TV snacking lead to weight gain but we apparently eat 25% more food later in the day. It makes our kids fat, ups their cholesterol, contributes to cardiovascular problems in later life, and interferes with food cues. The basic criticism is that it encourages mindless as opposed to mindful eating.

There are other no-nos too: Eating on the go, eating while driving – both linked with unhealthy eating habits. My mum thinks that snacking on the street is "common", which puts an interesting spin on my love of street food. Lunching at our desks, of course, is a very British habit, for which we should all be thoroughly ashamed, but we're all too busy, aren't we? Much too busy to attend to our digestive tracts.

I can't help feeling that the geopolitics of dining is yet to filter into the British collective unconscious. To paraphrase Ed Miliband, we just don't get it, do we? We nosh on the hoof, we gobble on the way to the gym, we feed our faces on public transport, which is frankly disgusting.

Yet listen up Earthlings, "environment matters", says Professor Charles Spence, experimental psychologist at Oxford University, whose research into multisensory dining inspired Heston Blumenthal's Sound of the Sea dish (seafood served with the sound of breaking waves). Music and food feature largely in Spence's work but lighting, colour and even cutlery also count. "One study showed that drinkers of strong coffee will drink more in brightly lit rooms, while lovers of weaker coffee will drink more under dim lights. People in a German winery rated a white wine sweeter if they drank in a red-lit room, while other research suggests that red suppresses appetite (red walls, for example, or maybe a red tray)." The Paul Bocuse cookery school in Lyon is now looking to see whether people perceive food differently if they change the colour of the food and tablemat.

So what does this mean for the amateur cook? Curate your food space, say the experts. Serve your baked beans with a little razzle dazzle! Light that candle, get out the Skandium cutlery, wear your posh frock! "The faster the music and brighter the lights the quicker you eat, while the more relaxed the ambiance, the slower you eat," says Spence. Think of the fun you could have at dinner parties.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, some chefs have turned a little diva-ish about this. Chef Carme Ruscadella was so concerned that the beautiful views from her Catalonian restaurant Sant Pau were upstaging her food that she allowed her customers to drink outside, but insisted they come inside to eat. Chef Denis Martin in Switzerland has been trying to upscale the ambience of his Michelin-two-starred eatery in, of all places, a knitting factory. (So, good luck with that then.) But my favourite act of gourmet control-freakery – and as control freak myself, I say that with love – belongs to Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago who was so worried that his customers weren't fully focused on his food that he took all the art off the wall to remove all possible distractions.

I'm probably not getting it, of course. The closest I have got to curating my food was eating bananas and cream in the bath – undeniably wonderful. But there's little doubt that getting the location right can add a dash of romance to any mundane meal. Spence himself is undertaking research to see whether fish and chips tastes better outside, than it does in a restaurant with cutlery. I'm betting yes – fish and chips by the sea with a salty tang in the air and the wind tousling your hair is a top gourmet experience. As are the sandwiches on a rain-soaked beach, the hot soup cracked open on top of Mount Snowdon, a slab of Kendal Mint Cake on a trek across the Lake District.

What do you think? What's the most unconventional place you have eaten something?

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