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17 strange food phobias you won’t believe exist

Halloween is drawing near, and while we’re in the mood to celebrate all things spooky and strange, let’s talk about food phobias. While fears of spiders and heights are quite common, once you get into the fear of foods, things can get pretty weird, pretty quickly. Not to judge anyone’s irrational fears (I myself am cartoonishly afraid of spiders), but it’s hard to imagine anyone being legitimately scared by broccoli. When thinking about food phobias, it’s important to distinguish dislikes from fears. Most people have strong preferences, but phobics experience genuine panic, sweating and nausea when faced with the food of their nightmares. For your Halloween holiday reading pleasure, here are the strangest food fears: cibophobia (see-boh-fo-biah)  The Fear of Food/Eating The most inconvenient food phobia of them all. Cibophobics typically have had a scarring experience with food poisoning or deal with large number of food allergies. This phobia can, of course, be deadly if not treated. MAGEIROCoPHOBIA…

Expensive wines taste better, but only because they trick your brain

Despite taste testings that show the best wines in the world can fall at any price point, your brain is predisposed to prefer expensive bottles. You can thank the “marketing placebo effect” for this. The placebo effect states that we tend to experience what we expect — and a higher price creates an increased expectation for better tasting wine. We tell ourselves that more expensive wines taste better — but then they actually do. A recent study published online in Scientific Reports confirmed that the same wine tastes better to consumers when it boasts a higher price tag. The small European study used just 30 participants with an average age of 30, but the experiment was in-depth. Participants were placed in MRI scanners to monitor brain activity, while they were given sips of wine, as well as the wine’s price tag. Participants were then asked to rank each wine. The catch? Participants were given the exact same red…