14 DAY TRIAL // University of Southern California investigators have determined in a new research that simply viewing pictures of people eating high-fat foods and drinking sweetened beverages determines a significant reaction in the brains of test subjects.
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the group determined that the brain is likely to activate its appetite and reward centers in response to being exposed to these images. This may go a long way towards explaining why ads displayed at prominent locations are so effective.
“Studies have shown that advertisements featuring food make us think of eating, but our research looked at how the brain responds to food cues and how that increases hunger and desire for certain foods,” USC investigator Kathleen Page, MD, says, quoted by PsychCentral.
She argues that this neural activation pattern may be an important driver for the type of overeating that plagues the developed world, and which leads inexorably to the current obesity pandemic, with significant implication on public health and healthcare budgets.