The experiments at Carnegie Mellon are the first to show that habituation to food can occur simply by thinking about eating, according to Dr. Morewedge and his colleagues Young Eun Huh and Joachim Vosgerau.
The habituation occurred as people imagined eating 30 M & M’s or 30 cubes of Kraft Cheddar, one at a time. They were shown photos of each M & M for three seconds, and each cube of cheese for five seconds.
The habituation effect didn’t occur when people imagined eating just three M & M’s or cubes of cheese. Nor did it occur when people imagined moving M & M’s one at a time into a bowl or doing other mental tasks, like feeding quarters into a laundry machine.
So this is literally mind over matter when you imagine eating the food and then get full from the thoughts. So you don't just eat a few the whet your apatite but you actually satiate yourself using your imagination. I wonder if you have a good imagination you can actually experience eating the thing without actually putting it in your mouth? This is also an interesting wrinkle:
The effect required lots of mental eating, and it was specific to each food: the people who imagined eating chocolate didn’t lose their desire for cheese.
The imaginary eating didn’t make people feel any fuller, and it didn’t change their overall opinion of M & M’s or Kraft cheese cubes. They just didn’t feel like eating as much of it at that moment.
So they satiated themselves by mentally eating 30 M&Ms but it didn't stop them wanting to eat cheese? Now that is an interesting variation. I know most foods I eat are only good for like 3 or 4 bites then it becomes a slog to the finish. Oreo Cookie Shakes from Jack-in-the-Box are case in point. I like the first few sips then by the end I want to throw the thing away. I wonder if a really richly imagined drinking of the the shake would make me not want to drink it? I will do some research on this.
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