Those junk food ads make you overeat and cause obesity

The situations portrayed in advertisements play an important role in influencing you to overeat junk food and cause obesity, says a new study.

The backgrounds and situations portrayed in food advertisements influence consumers to buy unhealthy foods, and could be a reason why people around the world are increasingly prone to overeating and excessive weight gain, say researchers from Utah Valley University in the US.

The study showed that certain types of advertisements make holistic thinkers more prone to unhealthy food cravings. Holistic thinkers tend to believe that everything in the world is somehow interconnected and they are more likely to consider the context of a situation, said Assistant Professor Dustin Harding. On the other hand, analytical thinkers are less likely to consider the context because they view the universe as independent objects that are not connected, he added.

For instance, an advertisement showing a bag of popcorn in the context of a movie theatre may evoke feelings related to enjoying popcorn while watching a good flick — feelings that increase craving for the snack more among holistic thinking consumers whereas the analytical thinkers would probably see the popcorn in isolation from the theatre and experience fewer cravings, he explained.

The team conducted experiments where the participants saw a healthy choice (arugula pizza) or unhealthy choice (cheese pizza) in the context of either a pizzeria or a plain, white background. Holistic thinkers were more likely than analytical thinkers to crave and want to buy the unhealthy foods shown in the context of a restaurant. “We aren’t claiming to solve the obesity problem, but we hope this research can be one part of the solution,” Harding said.

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