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Brut America
  • 3/25/2025
Addicted to food porn? A psychologist explains how looking at pictures of food effects the brain.
Transcript
00:00Whenever we see food, but also images of food on social networks or wherever else, our brain
00:09is immediately thinking about eating it.
00:12You can't eat the image, but our brains didn't evolve to kind of separate the real food from
00:17pictures of food.
00:19So food porn, gastroporn are the names given to the growing interest in food that looks
00:28beautiful, that's plated for the eye as much as for the taste buds.
00:35When you look at well-designed food porn these days, it will be portrayed, say, from a first-person
00:44perspective, as if the camera's inside the mouth of the person eating the burger, because
00:48that's much easier for me to see the image to simulate the act of eating.
00:55If you imagine yourself in an environment in which all day long you're exposed to large
01:02numbers of highly attractive, highly calorific food images, food adverts, then by the end
01:08of the day you'll have had to say no a lot, virtually, mentally, and that means your resources
01:14for self-control are depleted somewhat.
01:22Mentally tired, if I've been trying to do crosswords all day long or write an exam,
01:26I'm not physically, my muscles aren't tired, but my mind is, and it's the same with food
01:32porn.
01:32Hence, when you're thinking, okay, at home, what shall I have tonight?
01:35Shall I have a take-out burger or shall I make a healthy salad?
01:40Then you have less resources to make the right choice as a result.
01:48What is that doing to our consumption and does it play some small part in the growing
01:56global obesity crisis? I think it's not, to put things too strongly.