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Can We Make Healthful Foods Taste Good, or Even
Losing weight and eating healthier are national obsessions. Good psychological science helps us understand why the foods that are the healthiest are often not those we like the best. We understand that our food preferences
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Learning to Like Foods
In previous columns, we have distinguished between the hard-wired affect associated with taste (especially our love of sweet and salty tastes and dislike of bitter tastes) and the learned affect associated with flavor (i.e., retronasal
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Food Fight: Taxing Unhealthy Foods May Encourage Healthier Eating Habits
Recently, the Obama administration called for a total ban on candy and soda in the nation’s schools. States are beginning to impose “sin taxes” on fat and sugar to dissuade people from eating junk food.
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Flavor Learning in Utero and Infancy
In my previous columns about food behavior, I have contrasted the hard-wired affect for taste with the learned affect for flavor. This month, I present an interview with Julie Mennella, the pioneer who showed us
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The future is lookin’ sweet
Many addiction recovery programs teach a principle called HALT. HALT is an acronym for Hungry-Angry-Lonely-Tired, and the idea is that any one of these conditions of mind and body can be a threat to continued
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Hunger for Money
“Will work for food.” Scrawled on a piece of cardboard those words are a painful reminder of life’s fragility. They also pluck a deep chord in our psyche, because they reduce life to our most
