Welcome to the third of our July neuroscience highlights! Read to understand neuromarketing!
Neuroscience and the Food Industry
By Ashly Rodriguez Hernandez
When we think of neuroscience we think about the complex surgeries that take place, the ability to diagnose someone with a mental health disorder. Rarely do we associate food with our brain. Food makes us feel good and happy, but do we never stop to think about why we crave food so much? In this article, I will be discussing a few topics that I believe should be more well known, and furthermore looked into.
Cravings can be irresistible because it takes charge of our hunger signaling mechanisms. Whenever you’re craving something it is important to remember that it is temporary. A good way to stop before eating a lot of food or something that is bad for you, count 100 backward. Cravings can also be inherited. For example, at a young age, you start eating spicy foods because of your family’s cooking, you’ll develop a lifelong craving for spicy foods. Hormones and chemicals can also take place when it comes to our cravings. They both work together to send signals to the vagus nerve into the brain’s hypothalamus, which then ups the release of dopamine.
In a study, scientists conducted a series of experiments that asked subjects to indicate how much they’d pay for certain snack foods after they developed a craving for one of them. The results showed that the participants were actually willing to pay more for what they craved. Memories of eating this food or being exposed to it made the participants much more willing to pay more. This still occurred before or after they were hungry.
There’s a new field in marketing called neuromarketing. It studies people’s cognitive and affective response to marketing. Its purpose is to understand the process when the brain is comprehending what a customer might wish or want. Neuromarketing examines multiple centers in the brain to see which part of the brain is responsible for our food selections.
According to Harvard business school, there are actually valid concerns when it comes to neuromarketing on food. It is easy for companies to not have the right tech to back up their claims. For consumers giving insight into this type of research might cause privacy concerns. This is not about controlling your brain but to see how the waves react. For example, seeing a beautiful woman eating a burger might stimulate your pleasurable reward center in your brain. It is important to not let advertisements and food control our temporary wants. Because of matters like this, it is important to learn and understand how these things happen.
Works cited:
- Edgington, Katy. “Food Neuroscience: The Fascinating World of Eating Behaviours.” Open Access Government, 2 Mar. 2017, http://www.openaccessgovernment.org/food-neuroscience-fascinating-world-eating-behaviours/32087/. Accessed 21 July 2020.
- New York University. “We’ll pay more for unhealthy foods we crave, neuroscience research finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 April 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180402171047.htm>.
- Bielenia-Grajewska M. (2017) Neuroscience and the Food Industry. In: Thompson P., Kaplan D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_290-1#howtocite
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