If you're hoping to be successful on a dinner date, be more adventurous when choosing from the restaurant menu, a new study suggests.
Researchers in Pennsylvania have found that people who are open to try new foods are perceived as more sexually desirable and less sexually restricted.
Meanwhile, a reluctance to try new foods – known as 'food neophobia' – and sticking to the safe option on the menu is perceived as something of a turn-off.
A willingness to engage in trying something new at the dining table could be a 'cue' for a willingness to have an intimate experience with someone new as well, the experts suggest.
Interestingly, this pattern is specific to willingness to try new foods, not general willingness to try other new things, like hobbies, music or TV shows, they report.
If you want more luck with love, be more adventurous when choosing from the dinner menu, the study suggests
The study has been led by Hannah Bradshaw, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania.
'I was talking with a group of friends, and someone mentioned having dated a person who didn't like to try new foods and only ate things like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese,' she told PsyPost.
'I noticed that people seemed to think this was an undesirable quality in a dating partner.
'This led me to wonder whether one's willingness to try new food provides cues to mating-relevant characteristics.'
For the first stage of their experiments, Bradshaw and colleagues recruited 193 heterosexual undergraduate students.
Participants were randomly assigned to read a short story about a person of the opposite sex who was either willing or reluctant to try new food.
Overall, subjects who were reluctant to try new food were rated as less desirable sexual and romantic partners than those who were described as willing to try new food, they found.
Researchers then recruited a further 323 heterosexual
