Even when people are hard at work, pictures of cookies, pizza and ice cream can distract them — and these junk food images are nearly twice as distracting as pictures of healthy eating, a new study concludes. The study also found that after a few bites of candy, people found junk food no more interesting than kale. The study underscores people's implicit biases toward fatty, sugary foods and confirms the old adage that you shouldn't shop when you're hungry.
First, the researcher created a complicated computer task in which food was irrelevant and asked the group of participants to find the answers as quickly as possible. As the participants worked diligently, pictures appeared on the screen – visible for just 125 milliseconds, which is too fast for people to realize what they've just seen. The photos were a mix of images of fatty, high-calorie foods, healthy foods, or items that weren't food.
All the pictures distract people from the task, but the researchers found things like donuts, potato chips, cheese and candy about twice as distracting. The healthy food pictures – such as carrots, apples and salads – were no more distracting to people than non-food items such as bicycles, lamps and footballs.
The researchers then recreated the experiment, but gave a new group of participants two tasty candy bars before starting the computer work. The researchers were surprised to find that after eating the chocolate, people were no longer distracted by the fatty, high-calorie food images, more so than by healthy foods or other images.
