Caloric labels can lead you to rethink your food choices: study

According to one study, seeing food images containing information about calories makes products less appetizing, but also seems to change the way your brain responds to these foods.

According to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE, during the appearance of food images with calorie content, the brain showed a reduced activation of the reward system and increased activation of the control system.

In other words, foods that you might otherwise be inclined to eat have become less desirable once the caloric content has been displayed, researchers said.

This study is the first of its kind to examine how your brain makes food choices when information about calories is presented.

"Our findings suggest that calorie labeling can alter the brain's reward system responses when examining dietary options," said Andrea Courtney, a graduate student at Dartmouth College in the United States. at the time of study and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

"In addition, we believe that nutritional interventions will probably be more successful if they take into account consumer motivation, including diet," Courtney said.

For the study, 42 undergraduate students (aged 18 to 22 years old) viewed 180 images of foods without information on calories, followed by images containing information about calories, and have were invited to evaluate their desire to eat foods in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

The images were obtained from the food photo database or popular fast food websites displaying calorie information.

The 22 dieters and 20 other dieters watched the same set of images, including foods such as a cheeseburger, a side of fries or a piece of cherry cheesecake. .

On a scale of 1 to 4, they indicated their likelihood of eating food in the dining room.

Although dieters and non-dieters estimated that foods labeled caloric were less appetizing, this effect was most pronounced among dieters.

In addition, researchers badyzed responses in two brain regions that motivate eating behavior: the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).

Although all participants exhibited a decrease in activation in these areas in the presence of caloric information, dieters had more similar activation profiles in the OFC left for marked and unmarked foods.

This finding suggests that dieters may consider caloric information even when they are not explicitly present and relies on previous research suggesting that the presence of health signals can lead to decisions about healthier foods.

"In order to motivate people to make healthier food choices, policy changes incorporating not only nutritional information, including calorie content, but also a public education component, are needed to reinforce the long-term benefits. term of a healthy diet, "said Kristina Rapuano. , graduate student in Dartmouth.