What are the noiseiest foods?

At JCW Acoustic Supplies we are used to helping people reduce noise in their homes or businesses that emanate from their neighbours or other external sources like traffic or road works. However, one of the most complained about sources of noise on the internet is food. Crunchy food and people chewing with their mouth open are the most common causes of complaint. If you want to stay on the right side of your friends, family and co-workers we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 noisy foods to avoid.

1. Popcorn

Everybody has a story about being in the cinema, enjoying the film until somebody in front of you decides they are going to start eating their popcorn. All you can hear for the next 20 minutes is crunching and rustling which doesn’t really help you focus on the film.

2. Poppadum’s

For any curry lovers this is a noise that is synonymous with curry and Indian restaurants. Wherever you’re enjoying a curry 9 times out of 10 somebody will order a poppadum. After this follows a good few minutes of people smashing their poppadum’s into smaller pieces. If you’re the one ordering the poppadum’s you won’t have noticed this noise, but for anybody that didn’t order one, you can bet they’ve noticed the racket.

3. Crisps

This is a common complaint from people who work in an office. The rustling and crunching becomes a big distraction for co-workers especially for people who are in the middle of a busy project. The sound complaint is usually exacerbated if a co-worker has chosen a particularly smelly flavour like cheese and onion.

4. Nuts

Nuts receive a similar complaint to crisps about rustling of packets and crunching, but nuts receive one particular complaint; the length of time you have to listen to the noise. Most people eat a packet of crisps in about 10 minutes or less. Nuts linger throughout the day. If a family member or co-worker has a big share pack of mixed nuts you’ll be treated to noise throughout the day at random intervals.

5. Cereal

Cereal gets a mention because it is one of the most consistently noisy foods. You make noise when you pour it out of the box, adding the milk, eating the cereal and slurping the milk when you’re done. Cereal also has the added bonus of irritating everyone around you early in the morning as well.

Unfortunately there’s not a lot you can do to make these foods less noisy, excluding not eating them or moving to a different room. For the meantime we’ll just have to continue looking sheepish while we tuck into crisps and popcorn and hope we’re not sat next to somebody that will complain.