It's interesting how our minds can play tricks on us, like the placebo effect often used to dampen pain. Evidently, eating healthy foods can be just as tricky in certain situations, igniting your hunger, a seemingly counterintuitive discovery made by scientists in a new study.

In one activity, patients were divided into two groups: Those instructed to eat a healthy or tasty food among a variety of samples and others who were allowed to choose from the very same groupings of food to eat whatever sample they wanted. Although folks who were allowed to choose their food sample on their own were as hungry as those given instructions on what kinds of foods to eat, the latter group reported greater hunger later on.

A second experiment showed how framing a food as healthy versus tasty made all the difference in a patient's perception of hunger, just by using the very same sample of bread. One group given the bread described as healthy (low-fat with vitamins) reported more hunger and ate more of an available snack versus those given a sample labeled merely as tasty (a delicious bread with a soft center and thick crust). However, people who said they were watching their weight ate just the healthy portion.

Just more reasons some folks (like me) seek out support to lose weight and improve their eating habits by joining groups like WeightWatchers.

ScienceDaily March 25, 2010

Journal of Consumer Research March 10, 2010