Why Does Food Taste Better Outside?

At Galanter & Jones, we spend a lot of time thinking about why it matters that people go outside. Not just the obvious stuff—the vitamin D, the fresh air, the change of scenery—but the subtler shifts. The way a conversation flows differently outdoors than it does in a conference room. The way time seems to stretch. The way we forget to check our phones and, hey, what do you know, that email really didn't need a response immediately.

Food is part of that story. As the season of BBQs dawns, our team has been chatting about how meals seem to taste better outside. It’s a common enough notion (just compare the turkey sandwich you ate after a 5-mile hike to the same one you mindlessly munched on over a keyboard—its the same ingredients, but the flavors don’t come close), but is there any actual truth to it?

We couldn't find a single controlled study to settle the matter definitively, but we did find five theories worth raising a glass to. So, in preparation for summer—and all the picnics, BBQs, and alfresco dinner parties that it will hopefully bring—here are five potential answers to the question of why food tastes better outside. We look forward to putting them to the test while cozying up after sunset on a heated outdoor lounge.

Theory #1: Fresh air opens your palate

"The single most important ingredient in 99 percent of sandwiches is air," writes New Yorker restaurant critic Helen Rosner. She’s talking about the pockets of space between soft bread and delicate layers of ingredients—the room that allows flavors to unfold rather than hit you all at once.

The same can possibly be said for any food eaten outdoors.

Clean air clears the olfactory slate! When you're outside, scent travels freely—there's no recycled air, no competing smells from a kitchen or an office. Your nose, which does roughly 80% of the work your taste buds get credited for, is firing without interference. Or so this theory goes. We love that the most immediate explanation for why food might taste better outside, is also the most poetic.

Theory #2: Exertion makes everything taste better

There’s a psychological principle called effort justification: the tendency to assign more value to things that require something of us. In the context of food, it helps explain why a meal after a hike tastes so much better than the same meal eaten at a desk.

After you’ve exerted yourself, your body and mind are more primed to attribute a greater sense of enjoyment to the food you refuel with. Put simply, when you have an appetite, food tends to taste better. And because so many outdoor activities—hiking, skiing, running, biking, kayaking—ask something of your body, they set the stage for a more satisfying meal.

Theory #3: Humans love cooking over fire

Picture a piece of boiled chicken. Now picture the same piece of chicken off the BBQ, covered with grill marks. Most of us prefer the second without quite knowing why. Part of it is the chemistry of browning (aka flavor), but part of it is something older and harder to name.

Humans have been cooking over open fire for at least a million years. The smell of smoke, the slowness of tending something over heat, the crackle and warmth… Warmth and fire signal safety and comfort (it’s no wonder we’re so obsessed with it!). Cooking over a fire taps into something deep within us that a microwave simply can’t. Perhaps this ancestral ritual subtly encourages our brains to assign more value to the results and that is what makes the food taste better.

Theory #4: Community is a Key Ingredient

Outdoor eating tends to be a communal affair, and spending time in community (sans phones, work, or other distractions) is a key ingredient for a happier, more connected life.

Think about the great outdoor meals—Memorial Day weekend in someone's backyard, a picnic in the park, s'mores around a campfire. The food is almost never the most memorable part so much as the ease and joy of being together.

Maybe the food doesn’t taste better because you’re outside. Maybe it’s that being outside frees you from the distractions that often erode connection—leaving you more present, more joyful, and more open. And surely that aura of positivity rubs off on the food.

Theory #5: Outside, you're actually present enough to taste

We saved the meatiest, and most scientific, theory for last!

It’s a well established fact that being outside has profound effects on our brains and nervous systems—which, it turns out, have everything to do with how we experience flavor.

A quick overview of our good friend the nervous system: your nervous system is essentially your body’s command center, and it operates in two primary modes. The sympathetic system (“fight or flight”) and the parasympathetic system (“rest and digest”).

The sympathetic system is an evolutionary inheritance. For most of human history, survival depended on our ability to respond instantly to physical threats. When danger was detected, the body flooded with adrenaline, redirected blood to the muscles, and paused non-essential functions like digestion. Very useful when you need to outrun a bear.

The catch is that this system hasn’t quite caught up to modern life. It can’t always distinguish between a real, physical threat and a full inbox, a looming deadline, or the low hum of daily stress. So the same response that once kept us alive in the wilderness now quietly activates in traffic, during meetings, or while scrolling the news.

And in that state, your capacity to fully experience anything, including the food in front of you, is diminished.

The parasympathetic system is the counterpart: rest and digest. Slower heart rate, deeper breathing, a body that’s open rather than braced. Research consistently shows that exposure to nature is one of the most reliable ways to shift into this state, measurably reducing blood pressure, cortisol, and muscle tension.

This is the state in which flavor can actually land. When you’re calm, present, and not scanning for threats, your senses sharpen and your pleasure receptors can fully engage.

Being outside isn't a magical seasoning. It’s an environment that shifts you into a mode where you can actually taste what’s in front of you—present and relaxed enough to truly notice. The sad desk lunch, eaten in sympathetic overdrive, can’t compete with that!

Which brings us to the Memorial Day barbecue

The annual backyard cookout is, in a meaningful sense, an annual prescription for all of the above. You go outside, you slow down, you (watch someone else) cook something over fire, and you eat with people you care about without anywhere else you need to be. The food is delicious and the memories are sweet.

At G&J, the through-line of everything we make is pretty simple: more time outside is a good thing, and anything that makes that pursuit easier or more comfortable is worth building. That’s why we make heated outdoor furniture you’ll want to spend all day (and night) in.

Cheers to a season of more moments, meals, and memories made in the comfort of the great outdoors.

Warmly,
Team G&J