Who’s ready to lose some weight?
The food porn that currently occupies a good portion of your Instagram feed could be turning you off from the types of foods you’re observing, according to a recent study out of BYU that was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Research suggests that seeing photos of certain foods, as opposed to eating them, still gives you a feeling of satiation, which makes those foods less appealing when it actually comes time to chow down.
Here’s how the test was conducted: BYU professors Ryan Elder and Jeff Larson recruited 232 people to rate pictures of food. Half of the participants looked at (and rated) pictures of salty foods while the other half rated pictures of sweets. At the end of the rating period, all the participants were fed peanuts.
People who observed salty food the whole time weren’t so excited by the peanuts, even though peanuts never appeared in any of their salty food photos. Apparently, just seeing salty foods made those participants all salted out, satiated on the experience of saltiness without orally consuming any salt.
Luckily for foodies on Instagram, it takes more than a few pictures of a certain food to be satiated on it.
Read this article on TechCrunch.com
