A new strategy to promote healthy food choices

Poor food decisions and eating habits can contribute to excessive weight gain and health problems. Nutritional labels meant to convey healthiness instead may create negative expectations about taste or pose as a time-constraining hurdle for shoppers. Doris Schicker and Jessica Freiherr, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging, led a study in JNeurosci to explore whether pairing food labels with a sensory stimulus, like odor, affects how people perceive foods and thus promotes healthy shopping. The researchers imaged the brains of over 60 people as they interacted with drink labels complete with nutrition-related statements. Some labels were accompanied by odors. Odor-paired beverages were perceived more positively. Additionally, the presence of odor altered the activity of brain regions that process flavors and labels as well as brain regions associated with reward and decision-making. Thus, odors appear to improve label perception and, according to the authors, have the potential to promote healthy food choices. 

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About JNeurosci

JNeurosci was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.

About The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.