Always wondered how to resist the temptation of food especially fried food. Has your stomach tingled with weakness at the sight of scrumptious food in front of you. Has keeping your eyes off fried lip-smacking gourmet always been an issue.
If the answer to all of these is a yes, then you are in for trouble. Because clearly, food is your weakness. Fighting the urge to not pick up fried food is a struggle for you.
Battling the urge to resist fattening food is an everyday struggle. With so much being spoken about health issues, food consumption is also nowadays heavily monitored. Eating food with such high calories can have adverse effects on a person’s health.
But worry no more.
A recent study has found that one can stay away from the lure of fried food only by its whiff. Yes, its true. Breathing the whiff of fried food for longer than two minutes can actually help you get rid of the unhealthy craving.
The study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research and it suggests that this happens because the brain does not necessarily differentiate the source of sensory pleasure.
“Ambient scent can be a powerful tool to resist cravings for indulgent foods. In fact, subtle sensory stimuli like scents can be more effective in influencing children’s and adults’ food choices than restrictive policies,” said Dipayan Biswas, lead author of the study.
He conducted a series of tests using an ordinary nebulizer, that separately gave off the scent of healthy and unhealthy food items. (cookies vs. strawberries, pizza vs. apples)
He found participants exposed to the smell of cookies for less than 30 seconds were more likely to want a cookie. But those exposed for longer than two minutes, didn’t find that cookie desirable, and picked strawberries instead. He had the same results when the scent of pizza and apples were tested.
The researchers discovered a direct connection between the length of exposure time and whether or not one will indulge.
The reason why this does not apply to healthy food is because the smells coming from them are not too much. Fried food has a mix of oil, curry etc and that’s why it makes us crave for them.
So, next time you crave fried food, just go next to it, breathe in the smell for about two minutes and see the desire to eat them, go away.