Abstract
Obesity has become a severe worldwide problem. Compared to healthy-weight individuals, obese individuals seem to show an increased sensitivity to tempting food. In the present study, we test the pre-exposure effect, which implies that consumption of tempting food is decreased after exposure to tempting food cues in a context of a task that discourages food consumption. Healthy-weight and obese-weight participants were recruited via social media and university channels. Participants took part in a scrabble task with either candy letters or foam letters and subsequently engaged in a taste test. Results showed that in healthy-weight participants, consumption was reduced after solving the scrabble task with candy letters in comparison to foam letters. In obese-weight participants, consumption was reduced in the condition using foam letters (in comparison with healthy-weight participants). The pre-exposure effect was replicated in healthy-weight participants, but could not be observed in participants with obesity, since consumption was reduced in general in this group. Our results suggest that more work should be done to understand how food nudges work in the context of obesity.
Highlights
Obesity has become a severe worldwide problem and prevalence rates have almost doubled since the eighties and are still increasing (World Health Organization, 2016)
We propose that the behavioral conflict resulting from the exposure to temptation in a context where its consumption is discouraged triggers cognitive control processes that reduce approach behavior to the food (Dewitte et al, 2009)
The objective of this paper is to explore the applicability of the pre-exposure procedure to reduce consumption of unhealthy food after exposure to similar tempting food in obese people
Summary
Obesity has become a severe worldwide problem and prevalence rates have almost doubled since the eighties and are still increasing (World Health Organization, 2016). The behavioral change strategies resulting from this research are mainly focusing on education, reducing the access to food temptations, or the training of inhibitory control. These tools are very valuable, but do not seem to arm people sufficiently against food in our so-called “obesogenic” environment (Appelhans et al, 2016). One important reason for the moderate effectiveness seems to be that exposure to food (cues) directly increases individual’s motivation to consume the food, even if the individual is not hungry (Berridge et al, 2010)
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