stuart burford photography/iStockphoto.com In an experiment,
people who saw a picture of a big bowl of soup before eating
lunch were less hungry a few hours later than those who saw a
smaller bowl, regardless of how much they ate at the meal. It's
no surprise that how much a person eats determines how full they
feel right after a meal. But it's the memory of that meal, and
not the meal itself, that matters a couple of hours later. So
does this mean you trick yourself into thinness? Probably not.
But it does tell us something about the role that manipulating
memory may play in calorie intake. We've known for a while that
people who are distracted while eating — such as by watching TV
or typing — are not really thinking about what they're eating.
They're not making memories of the food, and may be setting
themselves up for later hunger. This area of research is helping
scientists to better understand "how our memory for food comes
to influence the decisions we make and the amount of food we
eat," says Jeffrey B