Food stimuli encourage eating

The smell of freshly baked cookies or freshly baked bread, or a steak sizzling in the pan, lead many people to binge eat.

A literature review and meta-analysis conducted by Rebecca Boswell and Hedy Kober of Yale University found that food stimuli such as images of food or the smell of food contribute to eating behavior patterns that can influence obesity, weight loss and eating disorders. These are conditioned responses, which means that people learn to associate certain stimuli with the pleasure of eating. These stimuli are potential stimuli that encourage eating and are used by advertisers to get people to buy certain products. The review looked at almost 10,000 articles. The researchers then combined 45 studies involving 3,292 people.

People could change their eating behavior if they were aware of the strength of these stimuli.

(Obesity Review, 17: 159 - 177, 2016)