Norgo Sounds Filling: How a Snack's Name Shapes What You Expect
People tend to associate certain sounds with size: 'ee' and 't' with smaller things, 'oh' and 'b' with larger ones. That tendency is not a passing curiosity — the study's authors note that the version they build on, known as the 'mil/mal effect', is almost a hundred years old. Applied to food, it turns out to nudge expectations: the researchers found that people expected a snack with a large-sounding name like Norgo to be heavier and more filling than one with a small-sounding name. A name is therefore less of a label and more of a claim about the contents.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
If a few letters can make a granola bar sound like a meal, then naming is product design, not packaging decoration.
It's a claim about what shoppers predict before they eat, not about what happens afterward — which leaves plenty of room between the promise and the granola.