Struggling with sugar cravings? Virtual reality might help.
The average American consumes 17 teaspoons of added sugar every day, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). However, the AHA recommends eating just six to nine teaspoons of added sugar per day, for women and men respectively.
Excessive sugar consumption has been linked to a range of different health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some types of cancer and obesity. But what can we do to stop our insatiable desire for sweet treats?
Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) might have the answer.
Trying to quit sugar? Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University might have the answer.Trying to quit sugar? Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University might have the answer.MarianVejcik/GettyIn a recent study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, the team found that people who watched immersive videos of other people eating candy consumed less candy themselves.
In the study, half of the 317 participants—aged between 21 and 28 years old—were given a VR headset and were shown immersive, 360 degree videos of people eating candy. The other half of the participants were shown a video of a coin being put into a laundry machine.
Both groups were shown their respective videos 30 times.
After this immersive experience, both groups were offered candy, and those who had watched the immersive eating experience ate around a third less than those who had been watching the coin at the laundromat.
"Our findings suggest that viewing food-related immersive videos may be a way to induce satiation and reduce the amount of food consumed after watching," the study's lead author, Benjamin Li Junting, said in a statement. "This could be helpful for individuals looking to curb their appetites or manage compulsive eating behaviors."
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The effects were even more significant when the participants were given an additional immersive sensation: smell.
Repeating the experiment with the scent of chocolate bars wafting in the background caused participants to reduce their candy consumption by an additional 11 percent.
"Smelling chocolate had a similar, habituating, effect as watching people consuming chocolate and decreased the participants' desire for the candy," Li said. "Our study found that exposure to food scent cues alongside visual food cues can lead to a sensory stimulation of tasting the food."
As well as curbing sugar cravings, as mentioned earlier, the study's authors hope that their findings could help people who are struggling with binge eating disorders and other excessive food consumption.
"As we only tested a chocolate scent in our study, we are keen to explore if the results might be different for other types of smells, for example, savory scents like garlic, or scents of greasy foods like French fries," co-author Lee Hui Min said in a statement. "There is also the question of whether the length of scent exposure will have a stronger influence, and whether the results of habituation through watching 360-degree videos persist over time."
