Fake Chips is an experiment which investigates the role of psychology in the relation between man and food.

The neuronal activities occurring in the brain, allow us to perceive the world: colours, textures, sounds, smells…food included. However, the perception it’s not just chemically happening in the brain, but it is strongly affected by the environment, together with the storytelling, our emotions and background, our imagination and much more.

The challenge was to make someone who doesn’t like vegetables, to eat and hopefully like them, using the power of psychology and perception. Therefore I put some zucchini, cooked as “healthy chips” in a different context, pretending they were regular chips from the supermarket.

I tricked the subject telling him a story about eating the delicious chips in the bag in front of him. It is clear, and funny, his displeasure when he tried them and found out that those were just green zucchini.

Nevertheless, I found interesting how much the storytelling I set, affected so badly the psychological perception: even if the subject doesn’t enjoy eating vegetables, he probably wouldn’t be so disgusted if he would have known in the bag there were zucchini instead of chips.