Hunger shifts attention to less healthy food options, research thinks

New research suggests that when people are hungry, they focus more on the taste of food and tend to ignore nutritional information, which can contribute to poor nutritional decisions.

The study, published As a revised preprint rated in be aware ofis made by the be aware of Editors. They say that the well-designed experiments-inclusive selection behavior, eye tracking and state-of-the-art computational modeling are convincing evidence to support the conclusion that people who are hungry give priority to taste over health in their food choices.

Despite existing public health initiatives, the prevalence of obesity in many countries has steadily increased. According to the World Health Organization, global obesity for adults has more than doubled since 1990 and the obesity of adolescents has quadrupled. In 2022, 2.5 billion adults were overweight and 890 million people lived with obesity – which can significantly increase the risk of developing serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of cancer.

For a single day we make different decisions about what to eat, and these choices are largely influenced by our environment. For example, it has been shown that food scores on food options can increase the chance of healthy choices. On the other hand, it has been shown that a hungry decision maker makes unhealthy choices.

“A preference for energyiens food is probably an evolutionary adaptation to ensure survival under the circumstances of scarcity. Since options with a high caloric food have become easier and affordable, this neurobiological mechanism to consumption of high-calorie foods are likely to be a contributioning factor for the worldwide rise of the rise of the rise of the Het Hething of the Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Het Hetwijf of the Het Het Het Wijde has” “” “” “” ” Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer, a Ph.D. Student from the Psychology department and Hamburg Center of Neuroscience, University of Hamburg, Germany.

“Although we know that hunger can lead to more unhealthy food choices, we wanted to better understand the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this, by investigating the effect of hunger for attention and appreciation processes in food choices.”

March served as the main author of the newspaper in addition to Sebastian Gluth, professor and head of cognitive modeling and decision neuretrial sciences in the Psychology and Hamburg Center of Neuroscience, University of Hamburg.

March and Gluth recruited 70 adults from the University of Hamburg and the surrounding area and asked them to complete an experiment with food choice in both hungry and saturated states. In both circumstances, the participants underwent a night fast. In the saturated state they received a protein shake the next morning at the start of the study, which corresponded to their daily calorie needs. In the hungry state, the participants underwent a fast at night. Participants also underwent a short investigation to determine which food they considered tasty, and how calorie they noticed that they were.

With the help of Eye-Tracking technology, they recorded where participants concentrated their attention when deciding between a healthier but less tasty option and a tastier but less healthy. Each food was labeled with a Nutri-Score-a standardized food rating. To analyze how the attention of each participant influenced their food choices, the team used an advanced decision-making model that is known as the multi-attribute Attans Drift Diffusion Model.

Although all participants showed a preference for tasty above the healthier options, the results, regardless of the hunger state, confirmed that hunger considerably reinforced this preference. This is in line with earlier research that says that hunger increases the observed reward of calorie -rich foods. However, this work goes one step further by showing that this effect is powered by visual attention patterns and the way in which information is weighed in the decision -making process of the brain.

In the hungry situation, the participants focused more on the visual attraction of food options and less on the Nutri score compared to the saturated state. They also made their choice faster when they are hungry. The computational modeling of the author revealed a double effect: hunger increased the importance of taste in decision -making, while the participants also have less chance of health information. In fact, hungry participants seemed to effectively ignore the Nutri score, unless it was actively fixed.

This suggests that simply displaying labels of nutritional information may not be sufficient to combat hunger-powered food choices. The researchers suggest that interventions that are designed to promote healthy eating should focus on making health information visually more prominent or focusing on this.

The study focuses on immediate food choices in a controlled laboratory environment. Future research could investigate how these findings translate into real-world institutions, such as supermarkets or restaurants, where environmental signals and marketing tactics can further influence decision-making.

“The most important collection meals is that hunger not only makes unhealthy, but tasty food seems more attractive, it also changes the decision -making process itself by changing what information the brain priority gives,” says GLUTH.

“This has important implications for public health. If we can design interventions that help to focus attention on health information, we may be able to combat the biological drive to choose high -calorie foods when hungry and promotes healthier eating habits.”