It sounds too good to be true, but a couple of UK psychologists
claim they have come up with a video game that will train your brain to
avoid fatty, unhealthy foods that result in people packing on the
pounds.
But before you celebrate by ordering a large McDonald’s
fries, the professors at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University
said the weight loss in their controlled test was about 1½ pounds a
week — and that those taking part in the test kept a log of what they
ate.
Keeping food diaries has long been shown to be a good method of limiting calories on one’s own.
Plus, the video game is not yet available.
In
the game, players are repeatedly warned to avoid pressing on pictures
of bad foods, like cookies, while responding to images of good foods,
like fruits and veggies.
Playing the game therefore trains people to associate calorie-dense
foods with “stopping,” according to Dr. Natalia Lawrence of Exeter, the
lead researcher in the study.
Those in the study ate 220 fewer calories a day.
Lawrence’s team previously showed that this training reduces how much food people eat in laboratory tests.
“These
findings are among the first to suggest that a brief, simple
computerised tool can change people’s everyday eating behaviour,” she
said.
“It is exciting to see the effects of our lab studies translate to the real world.”
The professor warned that the research is still in its infancy and the effects are modest.
In
the latest study, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust and published in the
journal Appetite, the psychologists found that 41 adults who completed
four 10-minute sessions of the training online lost a small but
significant amount of weight and ate fewer calories (estimated from food
diaries).
The reduction in weight and unhealthy snacking was
maintained six months after the study, according to participants’
self-reports.
These effects were observed relative to a control
group of 42 adults who completed the same “stop versus go” training, the
researchers said in a statement.
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