Burgers, Pizzas, Doughnuts, Twice As Distracting As Healthy Food

Are you unable a juicy cheese hamburger or a pizza or a sugary doughnut? Well, you do know that you are harming your health greatly. But did you know that you are causing distractions for yourself too? According to a study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, people tend to get distracted when they consume unhealthy, fatty and sugary junk food. And it's not just by consumption; pictures of these foods are good enough to cause immense distraction.

For this, researchers at the John Hopkins University created a complex computer task which was completely irrelevant of food and asked a group of people to take part in the study. While the participants were on the task, pictures of junk food flashed on their screen for 125 milliseconds, quick enough for people to not realize what the picture was all about. The pictures also included some inedible items.

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Results showed that the people who saw pictures of inedible items were not as distracted as people who were shown pictures of junk food. Also, pictures of healthy foods like apples and carrots and salads were only as distracting as pictures of bicycles and footballs and lava lumps.

The experiment was then recreated differently. This time, people were given 2 candy bars to eat before the experiment started. This time, the participants were not distracted by the pictures of unhealthy junk food and other pictures.

"We wanted to see if pictures of food, particularly high-fat, high-calorie food, would be a distraction for people engaged in a complicated task," said Howard Egeth, professor at Johns Hopkins University. 

With inputs from PTI