Learning new eating habits isn\u2019t simple.<\/p>\n
Our pre-existing feelings around food\u2014whether it\u2019s a distaste for olives or a love of pastries\u2014could make it harder to learn new eating habits, according to new research from Yale School of Medicine.<\/p>\n
Changing how we eat can have a big impact on health, both for managing conditions like diabetes and for maintaining overall well-being. But people often struggle to switch up their diet. Now, a new study published Oct. 9 in Communications Psychology suggests that how we feel about food going in may play a role.<\/p>\n
In an experiment designed to challenge their opinions about food, participants struggled to unlearn their food preferences. However, participants who had their sentiments challenged early in the experiment had an easier time changing their minds, compared to those whose preferences were first reinforced, and only then challenged.<\/p>\n
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This suggests that \u201cour pre-existing preferences for food are very strong and hard to change,\u201d says Ifat Levy, PhD, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. \u201cBut there might be slight manipulations that could make a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Challenging feelings about food<\/p>\n
Emotion plays a big role in how we learn. For instance, disgust helps people learn what to avoid, while joy pushes us towards chasing similar experiences. Feelings about food often form early in childhood and can be difficult to change.<\/p>\n
This matters, because \u201cwe\u2019re not usually learning new rules about something we don\u2019t already have feelings about,\u201d explains Alex Rich, PhD, a former graduate student in the Levy Lab, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n
Rich, who has previously worked with people with eating disorders, wanted to understand how intervening in people\u2019s food preferences might affect learning and decision making in real-world settings. To do this, Rich and Levy recruited around 280 people and had them identify four snacks they had strong feelings about\u2014two they liked and two they disliked.<\/p>\n
The participants were then asked to predict whether a computer program would assign positive or negative points to these snacks. The associations between food items and points changed repeatedly during the experiment.<\/p>\n
In some trials, the test reinforced participants\u2019 instincts by assigning positive points to snacks they liked and negative points to snacks they disliked. In other trials, participants were required to do the opposite: assign negative points to foods they liked and positive points to foods they disliked. Some participants started the experiment in the former, while others started in the latter.<\/p>\n
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In prior research, participants asked to do a similar experiment with objects they had no pre-existing feelings about\u2014say, a triangle or a rectangle\u2014could easily switch between assigned negative and positive points depending on where they were in the test. Here, \u201ceveryone\u201d struggled to go against their feelings and assign negative points to what they liked, and positive points to what they didn\u2019t, says Levy.<\/p>\n
However, people who started the experiment with the condition that reinforced their feelings had more difficulty switching their predictions between positive and negative points.<\/p>\n
This effect was \u201ccompletely unexpected, and quite strong,\u201d says Rich. The finding suggests that priming\u2014where our introduction to a concept or object shapes how we feel about it later\u2014might play a role in how we learn about food. For people looking to adopt new eating habits, this might mean that challenging your feelings about food from the get-go could make the transition easier, says Levy.<\/p>\n
\u201c[O]ur pre-existing preferences for food are very strong and hard to change. But there might be slight manipulations that could make a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ifat Levy, PhDElizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Comparative Medicine and Vice Chair for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity<\/p>\n
Participants also had an easier time assigning new values to food they didn\u2019t like than to food they did. While it\u2019s still unclear what this means, these results reinforce anecdotal evidence suggesting it\u2019s easier to add things to your diet than to remove them.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay, broccoli isn\u2019t your favorite thing. Maybe we can integrate it more easily than to stop eating ice cream,\u201d says Rich.<\/p>\n
People who binge eat don\u2019t do as well in dietary interventions for obesity as those who do not binge eat.<\/p>\n
\u201cEating disorder research tends to be a decade behind depression, anxiety, and everything else,\u201d says Rich. However, these results hint that food-based learning inherent in dietary interventions \u201ccan be manipulated with a priming effect, she says. \u201cI think that\u2019s a cool thing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freda Kreier, Yale School of Medicine. This story is shared in cooperation with Yale School of Medicine. The research reported in this news article was supported by the National Institutes of Health (award R01MH133886) and Yale University. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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