Why are we so attracted to junk food?

A study conducted at the International School for Advanced Research in Italy, led by psychologist Francesco Foroni, found that the image of delicious food literally makes us stretch our hands to the object of desire¹.

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To prove this, Francesco Foroni invited 57 young men and women (not overweight) who by the beginning of the experiment should not have experienced hunger. All participants were given tablets and asked to complete a simple task, which was to connect two green dots on the screen, 13 cm apart, as quickly as possible. But at every level of young people, complexity awaited – a distracting picture. It featured either healthy but tasty food (bananas), or everyone’s favorite bad food (pizza, ice cream, donuts), or even kitchen utensils like a toaster or a knife. Moreover, healthy and unhealthy food, shown in the photo, were equal in number of calories. Participants were asked to rate from one to ten, depending on how much they liked a particular product or how useful it seemed to them. Plus, they were required to indicate how hungry they were after the experiment, and admit if they are currently on a diet. At the end of the experiment, they were asked to take a special test, during which they revealed how much food each person associates with positive and negative words.

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The researchers analyzed the trajectory between the points drawn by the “experimental” and found that the movement of their hands changed as soon as a picture of food appeared on the screen. Despite the fact that each participant connected the dots, absolutely all the lines were bizarrely curved, demonstrating how the brain involuntarily led the hand to the image of food.

According to Francesco Foroni and colleagues, this study supports the idea that food and food-related stimuli are powerful attention-getting cues and strong sources of interference with what we are doing “here and now.” And in simple terms, scientists agree that food “persuades” us to eat it.

This effect extends to both women and men, regardless of their body mass index or whether they are on a diet or not. However, the force of attraction of food varied. Francesco Foroni found that the more unhealthy the food in the picture that the participant was reaching for, the worse he felt and the more this food affected the trajectory of the line.

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Francesco Foroni and his colleagues argue that this is because when a person has a negative attitude towards certain foods (for example, french fries), they unconsciously label them as “dangerous”. Paradoxically, the worse you treat food, the more it will attract you. This, of course, raises questions (wouldn’t it be more logical to withdraw your hand from potential danger rather than reach for it?), but if the researchers are right, then this is precisely the reason why many diets fail.

This study is neither the first nor the last to be done by scientists in the field of human-food relations. But its importance cannot be underestimated. Francesco Foroni warns that the participants in the experiment were full, and the pictures appeared in the same place to make them easier to ignore. But nobody managed. Accordingly, when we are hungry and our internal inhibitions weaken, a colleague offering a cake can become a reason for abandoning the diet (temporarily).

But not to wear blinkers so as not to see how and what other people eat? Of course not. But knowing how this mechanism works, try not to set yourself strict prohibitions on certain foods. You will see how fried and sweet will gradually cease to be such a necessity.

See more at Online editions Science of Us.

¹ F. Foroni «A bait we cannot avoid: Food-induced motor distractibility», January, 2016.