For many of us the smell of some kinds of food makes it difficult to stop from eating, even if we shouldn’t. Even if people are more and more scared of obesity, anyone able to smell but refuse a chocolate cake, for example, is considered to be quite a strong person.
It is a known fact that the smell of food can give us cravings, even if the body doesn’t feel the need to eat something. However, recently a new fact has been discovered: It appears that even an imaginary fragrance can give people insatiable desires.
According to an early research, obese people were likely to have overwhelming cravings based on smell. In addition, on the authority of a new study, obese people are predisposed to imagine the taste of food in a more vivid manner than people who are skinny. Also, the differences in visualizing smells can actually be an important explanation for cravings.
CAN IMAGINATION GENERATE OBESITY?
The researchers who applied D.J. Kavanagh’s elaborated intrusion theory of desire, which states that a mental image of cake might trigger a craving that’s quite hard to pay no attention to, conducted the new study at the John B. Pierce Laboratory and the Yale School of Medicine.
The experiment was based on more than 80 people and each of them had to complete a questionnaire. All questions were related to their ability to imagine visual and odor cues. They were asked to rate the vividness they experienced.
In accordance with the results, people who can imagine the smell of foods at a more vivid rate, have a considerable risk of obesity. This study was created to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour (SSIB) in Denver and it gives us interesting results.
However, the ability to smell food is the tricky business, when it comes to obesity and this is the reason why, according to researchers, future studies will focus on measuring smell ability and not self-reported ratings.
Maybe Pavlok could train you to not be so into those food smells?:
Able to Imagine the Smell of Food? You Might be Predisposed to Obesity!
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