What happens when we eat blindfolded?

The blind taste test featured in Netflix's megahit cooking survival show "Culinary Class Wars" has become one of the hottest social media memes in Korea.

Videos of people eating blindfolded, mimicking the blind taste-testing carried out by the two judges -- popular restaurateur Paik Jong-won and Michelin three-star chef Ahn Sung-jae -- in episodes 3 to 5, have gone viral on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Even Paik’s youngest daughter humorously recreated her father's blind-tasting moment, eating crackers with her eyes covered with a black cloth in a short video posted on the Instagram account of actress So Yoo-jin, Paik’s wife.

Netflix's first Korean cooking competition series "Culinary Class Wars” split 100 contestants into two groups: the “white spoon” team of Korea's star chefs and the “black spoon” team of lesser-known chefs from diverse backgrounds.

In the elimination round judged through blind tasting, two contestants from each team competed by making different dishes with the same main ingredient.

Without knowing what they were eating or who had cooked it, the judges evaluated the dishes solely based on taste, eliminating any preconceptions about whether the food was prepared by a star chef or a lesser-known chef.

“To be honest, eating food with an eye mask on is a crazy idea. You lose about 60 percent of what you sense. It sounded absurd at first, but it made me judge fairly,” Paik said in a press conference for the show held in September.

Then, what happens when we eat blindfolded?

Experts say eating without visual cues can significantly change our sensory experience of food.

Lee Hye-ran, a professor of food science at Baewha Women's University, points to our “expectations” for foods’ flavor as the main reason.

“Taste perception is heavily influenced by expectations derived from memories of specific foods. Without visual cues, we taste food without expectations of it being sweet, crispy, greasy or moist. In this case, there is a higher chance of perceiving its flavor inaccurately. You may feel some flavors less than others while becoming numb to the food’s texture,” she said.

Active visual processing in the human brain is another factor behind inaccurate taste recognition while eating blindfolded, according to a 2015 paper titled “Multisensory Flavor Perception,” by a research team led by Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford.

The report pointed out that food presentation is important to our multisensory flavor experiences as it increases activation in diverse brain regions.

“Almost half of the human brain processes visual information, while only a small percentage is dedicated to processing gustatory input. It is the brain, not the tongue, that truly experiences flavor,” the professor said during an academic conference about Asian food held at Ewha Womans University in 2017.

Online memes go offline

The latest fad for eating blindfolded has become an entertaining tweak to some food and beverage businesses.

Lee Seung-ho, a 31-year-old wine influencer on Instagram (@lee_wined), recently held a wine tasting event themed after “Culinary Class Wars." Participants tried different types of wine with their eyes closed to guess the grape variety of each glass.

After studying nine styles of wine, including whites and reds, two members of white and black teams were given the same type of wine to taste while their eyes were covered with black fabric. The contestant who got the correct answer first won the game, according to Lee.

“I thought applying the show’s blind taste test to wine tasting would make wine more enjoyable and accessible for many people,” Lee said.

“Tasting wine blindfolded is helpful for studying wine because it helps people understand various factors affecting the quality and taste of wine such as grape variety or production methods.”