Can we train our brains to pick quinoa over cake?

After a somewhat heavy Saturday night, on Sunday all I wanted to eat was delicious, greasy, junk food to ease the hangover.

The comfort that comes from devouring a pizza dripping in cheese is on a completely different level to the feeling of nibbling my way through a quinoa salad.

However, new research from Tufts University suggests that we may be able to train our brains to actually prefer healthy, low-calorie foods.

The study involved participants who were overweight or obese, who underwent a weight-loss programme for six months.

Brain scans were taken before and after the programme. These revealed changes in areas of the brain reward center associated with learning and addiction.

The ‘after’ scans showed that this area had increased sensitivity to healthy, lower-calorie foods, indicating an increased reward and enjoyment of healthier food cues.

The area also showed decreased sensitivity to the unhealthy higher-calorie foods.

Dr Susan Roberts, who co-authored the study, said “We don’t start out in life loving French fries and hating, for example, whole wheat pasta. This conditioning happens over time in response to eating – repeatedly! – what is out there in the toxic food environment.”

So, what was in this seemingly magical weight-loss programme?

The authors highlight the importance of the integrated approach of the programme. This included a high-fibre, low glycemic food plan, as well as providing education in behaviour changes.

This approach differs to other weight-loss schemes, such as gastric bypass surgery – a process to re-route your digestive system past most of your stomach. The nature of the surgery means that it takes a lot less food to make you feel full, decreasing the pleasure from eating food.

The ‘brain-training’ appears to combat this problem, by increasing your pleasure in eating healthy foods, rather than taking away the pleasure in eating entirely.

My concern, is over the validity of the study. It is important to note that the study only involved 13 participants. A much larger-scale study would be needed to confirm the reliability of the results.

It would also be important to do follow-up studies with the participants months after the programme ended. One of the main problems with diets, is the difficulty in maintaining them.

A 2007 study into the effects of diets suggested that dieters ultimately revert to their old eating habits, but with the added emotional effects of failing to lose weight by restrictive diet.

The researchers proposed that this emotional state actually leads people to eat more than they would have before starting the diet – causing them to rapidly regain weight.

Follow-up studies would allow us to see if this ‘brain-training’ was a permanent change, or a temporary adaptation that would be reverted in time.

Either way, despite enjoying healthy low-calorie foods myself, I’ll be sticking with pizza as my hangover cure for the time being.

 

 

Shock advertising for health campaigns? Not so shocking…

In January 2014, an Australian advertising campaign to reduce obesity compared giving children junk food to giving them heroin. The tag line “You wouldn’t inject your children with junk. So why are you feeding it to them?” was used alongside images of heroin being prepared for a child.

While this campaign was designed to appall viewers, a PRWeek survey showed that 47 per cent of the public thought that shocking images or adverts did not make them more likely to donate or support a cause.

In fact, the junk food advert actually made me hungry for a burger – not the outcome I think the campaign was looking for.

The first main problem with shock advertising is the fact that the adverts are so extreme. Take, for example, the ‘Get Unhooked’ anti-smoking campaign in 2007. The adverts showed people getting hooked on the mouth by a fishing line and dragged along until they reached a cigarette. While extreme, this situation is totally unrealistic.

This sensationalising of smoking did the opposite of what it intended to do, by using such images. A study at Bath University into the effectiveness of the adverts showed that people who had no conscious desire to quit smoking reported a 7 per cent greater commitment to quitting when presented with the softer, educational, Heart Foundation advert.

People watching it who smoked may have been able to fool themselves into thinking “I’m not that bad”, providing them with an easy get-out clause that the campaign (which generated 774 complaints) didn’t apply to them.

The second main issue is the fact that the frequency of shock adverts has also increased over the years, reducing the impact of new campaigns. In 1986, the “Don’t Die of Ignorance”  HIV awareness campaign was extremely effective in the UK.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Sarah Graham, said “[the adverts] were tremendously effective. They were visually so striking. People had to watch because it was so extreme.”

However, I believe the success of this campaign was two fold – firstly, the fact that this was one of the first shock adverts of its kind, and secondly because AIDS was a new disease. Shock adverts aimed at reducing smoking or obesity for example may be less effective as these are health issues we see every day.

Today, we see shock adverts all the time and so advertising agencies are forced to make them more extreme – which again, dramatises the advert, separating the viewer from the issue at hand.

Instead of making health campaigns more extreme, I think advertising agencies should focus more on sensitive adverts. A different form of ‘shock’ can come from adverts that are more realistic and affect the viewer emotionally.

For example, in 2011 an anti-smoking advert in the UK featured a baby in a room filling with second-hand smoke before showing the reality of an apparent smoke-free room. The tagline “If you could see what’s really there, you wouldn’t smoke” was simple, and effective. Shocking viewers by using a baby highlighted the emotional consequences of smoking, and as most parents want what’s best for their children, this was a relatable situation.

Shock adverts are no longer shocking. Advertising agencies need to look for new approaches to tackle important health issues in the UK, and tactics that sensationalise the problem are giving too many people at risk an easy get-out clause. Unless a viewer can relate to the advert, which in the case of the Australian campaign only heroin addicts who enjoy junk food would, it will have little impact.