Seeing High-Carb Food Images Can Evoke Appetite

If you’re on diet, need to shed some pounds, but got tired of eating endless vegetable salads, scientists offer you a newly discovered technique to make your foods taste much better. Sounds unbelievable? Maybe it really is! Anyway, the researchers claim that seeing images of foods rich in carbohydrates can make the foods we’re eating taste much better. So, if you’re sick and tired of eating fruits or vegetable salads day by day, keep some images of food rich in carbs like pasta or pizza, and look at those when eating your daily diet foods. This easy approach can assist greatly those of us who need to stick to a certain diet and have hard times with going on eating the foods they need to eat.

It is not the first study conforming the fact the vision plays a great role in our perception of food and its taste. Just recently, scientists at the University of Minnesota have reported about the effects of using images of healthy foods on young children, so parents could use healthy food images in order to develop healthy eating habits in their children. Images of foods we see can rise our expectations or change our perception of the foods we are eating at the moment. For the current experiments, a group of scientists from the Nestle Research Centre in Switzerland invited 14 volunteers who had no bad eating habits and no serious physical or mental health conditions. They all were offered to rate the taste of the foods they are eating while being exposed to various food images.

It turned out that when the participants were looking at low-carb food images (like green beans, watermelon, or others), enjoyed the food they were eating at the moment much less than those participant who were exposed to the images of foods with a high content of carbs (like pizza or pasta). The scientists led by Dr Johannes le Coutre studied brain images of the participants during the experiments trying to understand the processes linked to interconnections between the sight and taste of the foods. The main goal of the experiments was to develop an effective technology to boost food enjoyment and treat common eating disorders, starting from appetite disorders and ending up with more serious condition like anorexia and others.

‘The study provides novel insights into cross-modal sensory interactions underlying taste and probably food evaluation and consumption,” said Dr le Courte. He underlines the importance of further studies to look at the issue closer and study visual-gustatory interactions accountable for connecting food images and food taste. Julie Hudry, one more study leader from Nestle, said: “Our study has yielded remarkable findings, which we will continue to build upon. The individual’s evaluation of food, before it is eaten, is a crucial stage, not only for making nutritional choices, but for impacting the entire eating experience.” Check out more of interesting information about this study, as well as read the comments of the experts, by visiting the study webpage at PLoS ONE.

Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

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