Sarah Parker
Healthy or tasty: let your brain decide
Marymount University

Healthy or tasty: let your brain decide In a study recently published by NeuroImage, Dr. Grahenhorst and colleagues reported that humans are more likely to choose foods based on the healthiness of the food rather than taste. Obesity rates have continued to climb in the United States for many years. The Center of Disease Control has recently labeled obesity as a rising epidemic that needs to be stopped. This disease can negatively impact a person’s health in a variety of fashions including, but not limited to, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Another important factor to take into account is the rising health costs a person may incur due to being obese. Human beings food choices are different than those of their other primates because they do not choose their foods based solely on availability and survival. Humans have the luxury to choose what they eat by deciding what they are craving, availability, and information they receive through various language mechanisms. Marketers use food labels with key words to direct consumers to specific brands and types of foods (Grabenhorst, Schulte, Maderwald & Brand, 2013). The United States has recently enacted a strategy to counter the rising obesity rates by creating a law that requires companies to label food by the amount of calories it contains. By enacting this law, many psychologists believe that food labels will effect a consumer’s conscious decision making when deciding what type of foods to eat. The purpose of this study was to examine if food labels are a promising approach for promoting healthier choices by consumers. Experimenters in the study used a sample population of thirteen participants. These participants consisted of seven females, six males, and they were all in the age range of 22-27. All of the subjects were healthy, had a normal body mass index, and did not have any psychiatric diseases. All participants were tested using the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire and all participants tested negative for eating disorders (Grabenhorst, Schulte, Maderwald & Brand, 2013). Participants were asked not to eat for three hours prior to the experiment so that they would be mildly hungry and have motivation to eat. In the first section of the experiment subjects were presented with simple food labeling phrases that were composed of two to four words. The phrases either appealed to taste or health benefits. For example, when appealing to taste experimenters used the phrase “sweet and juicy” for strawberries (Grabenhorst, Schulte, Maderwald & Brand, 2013). When experimenters were appealing to health benefits they used the phrases like “low-fat content” and “high calorie content” (Grabenhorst, Schulte, Maderwald & Brand, 2013). While participants were rating the food items experimenters used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine how the amygdala would react to various types of food and labels shown. An fMRI is an imaging technique that measures the brain areas that are receiving the largest supply of blood and using the most amount of oxygen. This type of imaging technique also measures energies activity within the brain. The amygdala was specifically examined because it plays a key role in processing emotion and degree of pleasantness a person is feeling (Kalat, 2009). When experimenters used whole brain mapping they found higher levels of activation in the amygdala when healthy labels were shown in comparison to taste levels. The amygdala also became more involved when simple information was given, as opposed to a lot of detailed information. The results show that purchasers prefer short information that directly affects or impacts the purchaser rather than long, vague information. Results also indicated that the amygdala guides food choice. The amygdala processes both sensory, (e.g. odor, fat content), as well as high levels of implicit or very specific informative information. The implications of this study are that simple food labels are better than complex ones and that food labels do affect food choices. There were a few strengths and weaknesses found throughout this article. A major strength of this article is that it highlights the potential universal use of simple food labeling in order to improve a populations overall health. Two weaknesses of the experiment were the low possibility of being able to directly replicate the procedure, and the small sample size. The small sample size of only thirteen participants and the relatively young age range of the participants (22-27) limits the ability to generalize to other populations. The findings of this experiment can help play a role in stopping the growing epidemic of obesity. However, it also indicated the ethical consideration and public disclosure marketers need to use when labeling different types of foods. Results support a previous study performed by Dr. McClure and his colleagues in 2004, that investigated the influence of brand identity on specific drinks. Dr. McClure’s study found that the influence of brand recognition on drink preference correlated with the activation of the hippocampus (McClure et al., 2004). Further study of the topic of food choice would be beneficial to the population, in hopes of combating unhealthy tendencies and rising obesity rates.

References
Grabenhorst, F., Schulte, F., Maderwald, S., & Brand, M. (2013). Food labels promote healthy choices by a decision bias in the amygdala. NeuroImage, (74), 152-163.
Kalat, J. W. (2009). Biological psychology. (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
McClure, S.M., Li, J., Tomlin, D., Cypert, K.S., Montague, LM.,Montague, P.R., 2004. Neural correlated of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Neuron 44, 379-387.