Worried about your bad habit of eating unhealthy food? Scientists say that there is a fix for that. A new study says that it is possible to stop binge consumption of junk food.
Led by Assistant Professor Laura Corbit of the University of Sydney, the study focused on possible solutions to stop eating food detrimental to one's health. Corbit and her team sought to determine how advertisements like commercials and billboards influence a person's food preferences.
The researchers used laboratory rats fed with pringles, chow, jelly snakes, and oreos. They discovered that the presence of high fat and high sugar food make the animals habituated to the available choices. However, the animals were easily able to shake off from their unhealthy diet.
In the first experiment, the laboratory animals were exposed to either junk food or bland chow environments. The rats were then deprived of food and trained to use levers that would offer either pellets or sugar water to make them full. Following these, the bland chow and junk food choices were reintroduced so that the researchers could assess how the process affects the food-seeking behavior of the animals.
They found out that a habitual behavior is developed more in junk food environment than in a bland chow environment. The same procedure was adopted by the second experiment, But in this case, the researchers used sound cues that would signal the rats about their placement to either a junk food or bland environment.
The second experiment revealed that the sound that signals placement of the animals into a bland chow environment increases sensitivity to food devaluation. Applying the principle to humans, the researchers said that simple interventions and reminders of how unhealthy junk foods are, can end an individual's poor food preferences.
The researchers noted that smartphone applications which alert people about their food choices may help in ending junk food eating habits.
The research work published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience also suggests that the habitual behavior of human does not only depend on health or weight issues but also on external factors such as food availability. For instance, the presence of fast food billboards that promise tasty yet affordable meals can easily lure people to stick to unhealthy food selections.
Obesity and overweight are important health concerns in the United States. The National Institutes of Health reported that over two in every three American adults are suffering from either of the two conditions.