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Mar 21, 2021
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'Study: Junk Food Twice as Distracting as Health Food But candy…just a little…makes high-calorie food easier to ignore Pictures of cookies, pizza and ice cream distract people from work twice as much as seeing healthy food, concludes a new Johns Hopkins University study, which also found that after a few bites of candy, people found junk food no more compelling than kale. The study, which underscores people’s implicit bias for fatty, sugary foods, and confirms the old adage about why you shouldn’t grocery shop hungry, is newly published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. “We wanted to see if pictures of food, particularly high-fat, high-calorie food, would be a distraction for people engaged in a complicated task, said co-author Howard E. Egeth, a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. “So we showed them carrots and apples, and it slowed them down. We showed them bicycles and thumb tacks, and it slowed them down. But when we showed them ice cream sundaes and slices of pizza, these things slowed them down twice as much.” First Egeth and lead author Corbin A. Cunningham, Distinguished Science of Learning Fellow in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, created a complicated computer task where food was irrelevant and asked a group of participants to work on it, finding the answers as quickly as possible. As the participants worked, pictures flashed in the periphery of the screen – visible for only 125 milliseconds, which is too quick for people to fully realize what they just saw. The pictures, which appeared randomly, were either high-fat, high-calorie foods, healthy foods, or items that weren’t food. Video Transcript Food Distraction Video Transcript [Johns Hopkins University logo] [upbeat music] Man\'s satisfied voice: Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm Graphics: Distracted yet? You’re not alone. A Johns Hopkins University study finds high-calorie foods highly distracting. They’re twice as distracting as healthier fare. [clicking on keyboard] Howard Egeth/Professor/Dept. of Psychological & Brain Sciences: We set up a task in which people would solve a small problem at the center of a visual screen. [clicking on keyboard] And from time to time, we\'d flash a picture. And what we found is the picture always slowed you down a little bit. We could show a picture of a bicycle, a football, a thumbtack. Woman\'s voice: Ouch! These things would slow you down. If we showed pictures of food like an apple, or celery or carrots, they would also slow you down just the same amount. But the interesting finding was if we showed a picture of something like an ice cream sundae... Woman\'s satisfied voice: Mmmmmm Egeth: or a slice of pizza... Man\'s satisfied voice: Mmmmmm Egeth: that slowed you down twice as much. [car breaking squeal] Corbin Cunningham/Distinguished Science of Learning Fellow: So what we found was that images of foods like these tended to be more distracting than images of foods like these. Even though these foods were entirely irrelevant to the task they still hold some kind of power. Egeth: What we decided to do was a little bit out of left field. We decided to give people a small snack before doing the experiment. Two fun-size candy bars. Just little things like that. And the effect was pretty striking. The attractiveness of the high fat foods was completely eliminated by this small snack. [Pac man game ends sound] Cunningham: It\'s interesting to think about the power that these foods have in our everyday life and trying to maybe even further understand what role they play in our lives. Foods still have kind of this very powerful effect. They can be very distracting. [Johns Hopkins University logo] Video by: Johns Hopkins Office of Communications [email protected] Producer/Editor: Len Turner Photographer: Dave Schmelick'See also:
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