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Distraction key to chocolate cravings

Craving chocolate

If only I'd looked away (Image: iStockphoto)

Distracting yourself by looking out of the window or focusing on anything but that huge bar of chocolate may be the key to beating food cravings, Australian research suggests.

The aim is to reduce the vividness of the image your mind conjures up when you crave food.

A research team headed by Professor Marika Tiggemann, from Flinders University in Adelaide, publishes its strategy online ahead of print in the journal Appetite.

Until now, the popular scientific approach to food cravings has been 'not to think about it'.

But as any dedicated chocoholic will tell you, the advice just doesn't cut it.

Tiggemann says the techniques of cognitive psychology in reducing the vividness of visual, gustatory (taste) or olfactory (smell) imagery might just do the trick.

The researchers looked at the role of mental imagery in the experience of food cravings among 130 undergraduate students (56 men, 74 women) aged 17 to 44 years.

The researchers asked them a range of questions on previous food craving experiences, their ability to restrain their diet, and what prompted their cravings.

"Anecdotal evidence shows that when people crave chocolate or a cigarette they talk about the ability to 'see, smell and almost taste' it," Tiggemann says.

"We got people to think back to the last time they were craving something and to describe it for us. Then we got them to think about what they most felt like now and to describe how they felt about that.

"What we came up with was the notion that indeed, imagery is a big part of cravings, in particular the 'seeing it, smelling it, tasting it' imagery."

Seeing, tasting, smelling

In particular, Tiggemann says craving intensity was related to the vividness of the food image and that the senses most involved were visual (39.7%), gustatory (30.6%) and olfactory (15.8%).

The team concludes that cognitive techniques aimed at reducing or 'interfering' with this imagery could assist with problematic cravings.

"The interference could involve the person doing some sort of task, or looking at something else. So far, what people have developed to deal with cravings hasn't been that successful, so this is just a different way of looking at it," Tiggemann says.

While chocolate remains the food people in the West crave most often, this doesn't always translate to other cultures.

In Egypt for example, the most commonly craved foods are vegetable dishes, some stuffed or cooked with meat.

Tags: health, biology, neuroscience