Use Your Nose to Kill Your Cravings

Can your sense of smell kill your cravings?!

I’d imagine it would seem obvious to most that smelling certain foods can increase your appetite and even trigger your body to release gastric acid and insulin. But… what if you could do the opposite and manipulate your sense of smell to kill junk food cravings? A recent study published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2019 says it’s possible!

Researchers conducted a series of tests to see how ambient food scents impact our food choices. They filled the air with both healthy and unhealthy food smells like cookies versus strawberries and pizza versus apples to see how participants responded.

Here is the key finding: The length you smell a food for matters significantly. Those exposed to the cookie scent for under 30 seconds were more likely to crave a cookie whereas people exposed for 2+ minutes, though, seemed to lose the craving and chose strawberries. The same trend occurred when pizza and apple scents squared off. People chose the healthier option when they smelled the unhealthy food for more than two minutes.

Conversely, non-indulgent foods like vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains etc. have little influence on what we order as these types of foods don’t give off much of an ambient scent.

The take away… embrace indulgent smells but sit with them for at least two minutes before ordering or eating in order to attempt satisfying your cravings without taking in one sugar laden calorie.