What Flavor is Your Personality? Discover Who You Are by Looking at What You Eat

by Alan Hirsch

The ice cream you prefer, the spices and scents you love and the foods you enjoy can reveal the kind of person you are and even predict the ideal lover or mate for you. Based on his own numerous scientific studies, Dr. Hirsch shows you how food preferences provide important clues about personality types and how they can even predict behavior.Not only can you tell what kind of a person you are by the ice cream you eat -- a vanilla lover is a gregarious risk taker with a hectic schedule, a double-chocolate lover is the life of the party and likes to be the center of attention -- but you can even choose your mate by the ice cream he or she prefers.

Dr. Hirsch reveals that men with the most active sex lives responded most strongly to the odors of lavender, oriental spices and cola. Women respond to the scent of Good & Plenty candy and cucumber. The smell of hot cinnamon buns turns on both men and women. Learn why pregnant women crave certain foods, and the roles food plays in different religions and cultures. Each chapter contains simple, fun-filled quizzes based on the food and scents we prefer so that you can discover the real you.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

Reviews

[Martin Bihl · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are good things and not so good things about this book. On the "good" side is the vast idea that smells operate entirely differently than our other senses - more directly to the emotional and bypassing the logical brain - and therefore open up a huge opportunity for any one wishing to communicate.

On the "not so good" side, is the fact that this book so clearly is just the very tip of the iceberg. The experiments are with incredibly small samples. The variables that could be at play are legion. Indeed, this book feels like scientists wandering blindly into a big room that they're trying to get a sense of. The room is big and that's exciting - but what it looks like and means is entirely beyond their comprehension.

Also, the book feels really thin - that is, the last sixty or so pages are simply documentation of their experiments (not really useful to the non-scientist), many of the insights are repeated in various chapters, and the last chapter seems to be more about food than about smell.

All in all, a good start, but not nearly rigorous or deep enough.

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I expected. There are mini quizzes (more like questions..."do u prefer this or that?") throughout the book that really didn't tell me anything about myself that I didn't already know. In between was a lot of rambling on and on about sense of smell. I skimmed over most of it.

The big quiz at the end was a waste of time for me. First, it was a library book so I had to copy the chart onto paper by hand. After answering my preferences on over 200 foods and adding up the totals in 5 columns, the evaluation was based on answering 144 or more in any column. My answers were pretty much divided evenly across the 5 columns with my highest being 81 so the explanation didn't apply to me and it was a big let down. Boo. :(

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rearead this with a friend who saw it on my shelf. It's like taking seventeen magazine quizes for foodies. Silly but fun. As accurate as you want it to be. :)

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting information here, but did not have as many of the quizzes, etc., that I expected to find. Still, fun reading.