A New Technique For Reducing Cravings For Junk Food

A New Technique For Reducing Cravings For Junk Food.
Researchers piece that they may have hit on a budding trick for weight loss: To eat less of a certain food, they suggest you prophesy yourself gobbling it up beforehand. Repeatedly imagining the consumption of a food reduces one's edacity for it at that moment, said lead researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor of social and conclusion sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Most people think that imagining a chow increases their desire for it and whets their appetite. Our findings show that it is not so simple," she said.

Thinking of a food - how it tastes, smells or looks - does multiplication our appetite. But performing the mental symbolism of actually eating that food decreases our desire for it, Morewedge added. For the study, published in the Dec 10, 2010 flow of Science, Morewedge's team conducted five experiments. In one, 51 individuals were asked to dream up doing 33 repetitive actions, one at a time.

A jurisdiction group imagined putting 33 coins into a washing machine. Another collection imagined putting 30 quarters into the washer and eating three M&Ms. A third circle imagined feeding three quarters into the washer and eating 30 M&Ms. The individuals were then invited to nosh freely from a bowl of M&Ms.

Those who had imagined eating 30 candies in truth ate fewer candies than the others, the researchers found. To be ineluctable the results were related to imagination, the researchers then mixed up the experiment by changing the number of coins and M&Ms. Again, those who imagined eating the most candies ate the fewest.