Green beans or fries… your heart skips a beat. If you want to avoid falling for foods that are too fatty or too saltytake your time. By taking a few more seconds to choose a food, the brain would integrate the health information and choose the healthiest food, according to the results of a study published Psychological Science.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (United States) evaluated on a scale of milliseconds, the decision-making time to choose between two foods, a healthy one and a pleasure food. And what information between “healthy” and “tasty” took over food choices.
“In typical food choices, individuals need to consider attributes such as health and taste in their decisions”, explains Nicolette Sullivan, student in the laboratory of Antonio Rangel, professor of neurosciences, main author of the study.
“We wanted to know how much the taste of food begins to integrate into the process of choice, and how important the notion of health was”.
28 hungry students who had not eaten for 4 hours had to evaluate 160 foods taking into account their health quality, their taste and the desire they had to eat them.
Then the volunteers had to choose between 280 pairs of foods consisting of a good for health and a more fatty or sweet.
Using statistical tools, the researchers analyzed the time and motivations that prompted participants to choose a food.
Decision-making took 200 milliseconds. And 32% of choices were for less healthy foods. The results of the study reveal that people who make healthy food choices make their decision in 323 milliseconds.
“The conclusions of this survey provide essential information in food decision-making. The notion of health “arising in the brain“after that of taste, it is therefore important to wait before choosing a food”, concludes the researcher.
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