Food Choices: Individual Differences In The Brain's Value System

To understand our eating habits we need to analyze and break down the components of the brain to a general understanding. Not many have thought of the ways our cravings come to be or how the brain chemical imbalances create our eating habits. Most people who want to change their food consumption dependency tend to have complications changing or improving due to the cravings. To prevent these kind of issues we have to comprehend how our brain works to know what would be best to our health.
In an interesting research article called “Health and Pleasure in Consumers’ Dietary Food Choices: Individual Differences in the Brain’s Value Systems” (later to be referred as Health and Pleasure) mentioned “...when we sit down for a meal, we are seeking …show more content…
In page two of the article it was stated that,”... those with a high Body Mass Index intuitively believe that healthiness and tastiness are negatively correlated”. I definitely agree with this statement because most people are trained to believe that “healthy food” (any food with vegetables or cooked without any extra oils) taste bad because it doesn’t look as appealing as a double bacon cheeseburger. That’s why appearance has become an important aspect in advertising, they have mastered the biggest manipulation to a high mass of people. Anyone adapted to the modern culture especially in the United States will come to the conclusion that if it looks greasy and unhealthy it would taste amazing no matter what. When this association is made between healthy and unhealthy foods and health related information is presented they would most likely ignore it or push it aside because they no longer care, later on, their BMI will be affected because of the lack of health …show more content…
If a person has self control is because they are motivated and they care because the outcome is greater than what they started with. Now, with the value of healthiness it would mean that a person cares for their own health and would do anything to stay healthy even if it means no “junk food” and they would motivate themselves to keep it that way. When a person is making a decision of maintaining self control the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is activated. Also when a person inhibits compulsion cravings they’ll have less activation in the left DLPFC reward-related brain area. These activation is seen in obese individual more than the one who are not obese when presented food pictures (a summarized statement in page two). The research team came to conclusion that when people make unhealthy food choices they only value what they taste and lack of self control. The kind of people who fall into this category are more likely to fall into temptation when they are exercising a diet. An interesting statement in the article that said “...individuals that only value tastiness, especially those with high BMI, drawing attention to health benefits will not help them improve self-control” made me rethink all the “healthy choices” I did myself. I personally thought that if I focused hard enough on