Many of us try to eat more fruits and vegetables and less ultra-processed food. But why is sticking to your goals so hard?

High-fat, sugar-rich and salty foods are simply so enjoyable to eat. And it’s not just you – we’ve evolved that way. These foods activate the brain’s reward system because in the past they were rare.

Now, they’re all around us. In wealthy modern societies we are bombarded by advertising which intentionally reminds us about the sight, smell and taste of calorie-dense foods. And in response to these powerful cues, our brains respond just as they’re designed to, triggering an intense urge to eat them.

Here’s how food cravings work and what you can do if you find yourself hunting for sweet or salty foods.

What causes cravings?

A food craving is an intense desire or urge to eat something, often focused on a particular food.

We are programmed to learn how good a food tastes and smells and where we can find it again, especially if it’s high in fat, sugar or salt.

Something that reminds us of enjoying a certain food, such as an eye-catching ad or delicious smell, can cause us to crave it.

The cue triggers a physical response, increasing saliva production and gastric activity. These responses are relatively automatic and difficult to control.

What else influences our choices?

While the effect of cues on our physical response is relatively automatic, what we do next is influenced by complex factors.
Whether or not you eat the food might depend on things like cost, whether it’s easily available, and if eating it would align with your health goals.

But it’s usually hard to keep healthy eating in mind. This is because we tend to prioritise a more immediate reward, like the pleasure of eating, over one that’s delayed or abstract – including health goals that will make us feel good in the long term.

Stress can also make us eat more. When hungry, we choose larger portions, underestimate calories and find eating more rewarding.

Looking for something salty or sweet

So what if a cue prompts us to look for a certain food, but it’s not available?

Previous research suggested you would then look for anything that makes you feel good. So if you saw someone eating a doughnut but there were none around, you might eat chips or even drink alcohol.

But our new research has confirmed something you probably knew: it’s more specific than that.

If an ad for chips makes you look for food, it’s likely a slice of cake won’t cut it – you’ll be looking for something salty. Cues in our environment don’t just make us crave food generally, they prompt us to look for certain food “categories”, such as salty, sweet or creamy.

Food cues and mindless eating

Your eating history and genetics can also make it harder to suppress food cravings. But don’t beat yourself up – relying on willpower alone is hard for almost everyone.

Food cues are so powerful they can prompt us to seek out a certain food, even if we’re not overcome by a particularly strong urge to eat it. The effect is more intense if the food is easily available.

This helps explain why we can eat an entire large bag of chips that’s in front of us, even though our pleasure decreases as we eat. Sometimes we use finishing the packet as the signal to stop eating rather than hunger or desire.

Is there anything I can do to resist cravings?

We largely don’t have control over cues in our environment and the cravings they trigger. But there are some ways you can try and control the situations you make food choices in.

• Acknowledge your craving and think about a healthier way to satisfy it. For example, if you’re craving chips, could you have lightly-salted nuts instead? If you want something sweet, you could try fruit.
• Avoid shopping when you’re hungry, and make a list beforehand. Making the most of supermarket “click and collect” or delivery options can also help avoid ads and impulse buys in the aisle.
• At home, have fruit and vegetables easily available – and easy to see. Also have other nutrient dense, fibre-rich and unprocessed foods on hand such as nuts or plain yoghurt. If you can, remove high-fat, sugar-rich and salty foods from your environment.
• Make sure your goals for eating are SMART. This means they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
• Be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up if you eat something that doesn’t meet your health goals. Just keep on trying.

Gabrielle Weidemann, Associate Professor in Psychological Science, Western Sydney University and Justin Mahlberg, Research Fellow, Pyschology, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you or a loved one have noticed changes in your memory or thinking as you’ve grown older, this could reflect typical changes that occur with ageing. In some cases though, it might suggest something more, such as the onset of dementia.

The best thing to do if you have concerns is to make an appointment with your GP, who will probably run some tests. Assessment is important because if there is something more going on, early diagnosis can enable prompt access to the right interventions, supports and care.

But current methods of dementia screening have limitations, and testing can be daunting for patients.

Our research suggests virtual reality (VR) could be a useful cognitive screening tool, and mitigate some of the challenges associated with current testing methods, opening up the possibility it may one day play a role in dementia diagnosis.

Where current testing is falling short

If someone is worried about their memory and thinking, their GP might ask them to complete a series of quick tasks that check things like the ability to follow simple instructions, basic arithmetic, memory and orientation.

These sorts of screening tools are really good at confirming cognitive problems that may already be very apparent. But commonly used screening tests are not always so good at detecting early and more subtle difficulties with memory and thinking, meaning such changes could be missed until they get worse.

A clinical neuropsychological assessment is better equipped to detect early changes. This involves a comprehensive review of a patient’s personal and medical history, and detailed assessment of cognitive functions, including attention, language, memory, executive functioning, mood factors and more. However, this can be costly and the testing can take several hours.

Testing is also somewhat removed from everyday experience, not directly tapping into activities of daily living.

Enter virtual reality

VR technology uses computer-generated environments to create immersive experiences that feel like real life. While VR is often used for entertainment, it has increasingly found applications in health care, including in rehabilitation and falls prevention.

Using VR for cognitive screening is still a new area. VR-based cognitive tests generally create a scenario such as shopping at a supermarket or driving around a city to ascertain how a person would perform in these situations.

Notably, they engage various senses and cognitive processes such as sight, sound and spatial awareness in immersive ways. All this may reveal subtle impairments which can be missed by standard methods.

VR assessments are also often more engaging and enjoyable, potentially reducing anxiety for those who may feel uneasy in traditional testing environments, and improving compliance compared to standard assessments.

Most studies of VR-based cognitive tests have explored their capacity to pick up impairments in spatial memory (the ability to remember where something is located and how to get there), and the results have been promising.

Given VR’s potential for assisting with diagnosis of cognitive impairment and dementia remains largely untapped, our team developed an online computerised game (referred to as semi-immersive VR) to see how well a person can remember, recall and complete everyday tasks. In our VR game, which lasts about 20 minutes, the user role plays a waiter in a cafe and receives a score on their performance.

To assess its potential, we enlisted more than 140 people to play the game and provide feedback. The results of this research are published across three recent papers.

Testing our VR tool

In our most recently published study, we wanted to verify the accuracy and sensitivity of our VR game to assess cognitive abilities.

We compared our test to an existing screening tool (called the TICS-M) in more than 130 adults. We found our VR task was able to capture meaningful aspects of cognitive function, including recalling food items and spatial memory.

We also found younger adults performed better in the game than older adults, which echoes the pattern commonly seen in regular memory tests.

In a separate study, we followed ten adults aged over 65 while they completed the game, and interviewed them afterwards. We wanted to understand how this group – who the tool would target – perceived the task.

These seniors told us they found the game user-friendly and believed it was a promising tool for screening memory. They described the game as engaging and immersive, expressing enthusiasm to continue playing. They didn’t find the task created anxiety.

For a third study, we spoke to seven health-care professionals about the tool. Overall they gave positive feedback, and noted its dynamic approach to age-old diagnostic challenges.

However, they did flag some concerns and potential barriers to implementing this sort of tool. These included resource constraints in clinical practice (such as time and space to carry out the assessment) and whether it would be accessible for people with limited technological skills. There was also some scepticism about whether the tool would be an accurate method to assist with dementia diagnosis.

While our initial research suggests this tool could be a promising way to assess cognitive performance, this is not the same as diagnosing dementia. To improve the test’s ability to accurately detect those who likely have dementia, we’ll need to make it more specific for that purpose, and carry out further research to validate its effectiveness.

We’ll be conducting more testing of the game soon. Anyone interested in giving it a go to help with our research can register on our team’s website.

Joyce Siette, Research Theme Fellow in Health and Wellbeing, Western Sydney University and Paul Strutt, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.