Source: Guardian
August 3, 2005 Author: Jamie Wilson
It's a weight loss regime that seems to guarantee success, but researchers may have to work on the name. Proving, it seems, that fighting the flab really is a question of mind over matter, psychologists in America "brainwashed" a number of volunteers into losing their taste for certain fattening foods by implanting unpleasant childhood memories about them.
Even though the memories were false, the psychologists from the University of California managed to successfully turn people off strawberry ice cream, pickles and hard-boiled eggs.
In each case they manipulating the volunteers into believing that the foods had made them sick when they were children.
The scientists said they had also successfully implanted positive opinions about asparagus by convincing subjects that they once loved the vegetable.
Elizabeth Loftus, a distinguished professor of psychology, social behaviour and criminology who led the team, told the newspaper that, if perfected, the technique could potentially induce people to eat better by implanting good memories about fruits and vegetables and bad ones about low-nutrient, high-calorie foods.
But according to Stephen Behnke, the ethics director of the American Psychological Association, implanting memories also "raises profound ethical questions".
"Say, for example, we could change a person's belief about their entire childhood," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Would doing so be ethical?"
The food studies are the latest in a string of memory experiments by Professor Loftus, who is most famous for her work on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. She has suggested that most of these memories are probably false.
Prof Loftus told the newspaper that the food experiments were the first in which she had explored a positive, practical application of memory manipulation.
In the strawberry ice cream experiment a group of students were asked to fill out forms about their food experiences and preferences. Some of the subjects were then given a computer analysis which falsely said they had become sick from eating strawberry ice cream as children.
Almost 20% later agreed in a questionnaire that strawberry ice cream had made them sick and that they intended to avoid it in the future.
The results were even more startling in a second experiment, when students were asked to detail the imaginary ice cream episode, during which a total of 41% said they believed the tale and intended to avoid strawberry ice cream in the future.
Prof Loftus, although acknowledging that the issue was ethically tricky, said the techniques could be used by parents to persuade children to eat more healthily.
"People kind of cringe at the idea that anyone would suggest that they lie to their children, but they do it all the time when they tell them Santa Claus exists and so does the tooth fairy," she told the newspaper.
But before it can be hailed as a cure for childhood obesity, the scientists will have to scale a major obstacle: so far they have failed to implant false beliefs about chocolate chip cookies and crisps.
