You could satisfy appetite just by looking at pictures of food, study says trends now
You've heard of eating smaller meals, cutting out sugar and taking regular walks to help shave off the extra pounds.
But now scientists say that just staring at pictures of the food you crave could help suppress appetite and stimulate weight loss.
Researchers in Denmark found that people who looked at 30 pictures of an M&M for at least two seconds per image and 'vividly' imagined eating the candy felt more full and wanted to eat less of the food afterward.
They were compared to an equal group of people who were shown pictures of the same food only three times.
The scientists suggested that the action stimulated an area of the brain linked to appetite and made someone feel like they had already consumed the food, boosting feelings of fullness and potentially helping to lose weight with minimal effort.
The above images are from the first experiment. The first image is a picture of the orange M&M that participants were shown. They had to view this image for at least two seconds each for three or 30 times. After the experiment, participants were then shown pictures of bowls with one to ten M&Ms in them (The second and third images show the bowls containing one or ten M&Ms) and asked to pick one to represent how many M&Ms they wanted. Results showed that participants felt more satisfied and wanted fewer M&Ms if they viewed the pictures 30 times
To vary the experiment, participants were then shown pictures of different colored M&Ms (top left picture) and, to elicit a sweeter taste response, different colored Skittles (Bottom left). After seeing these images either three or 30 times, they were again shown the bowls of M&Ms or, in line three, Skittles, and asked to choose how many they wanted from one to ten. Results from these experiments matched those in the first experiment
PhD student Tjark Anderson, a food scientist at the university who led the research, said: 'In our experiment, we showed that when the participants saw the same food picture 30 times, they felt more satiated than before they had seen the picture.'
He added: 'You will receive a physiological response to something you have only
