First, the authors reviewed existing studies about what happens to your body when you see pictures of food. Turns out, food imagery ramps up activity in parts of the brain associated with attention, reward, learning, emotion, memory, decision making, visual processing, and physical coordination, and can increase heart rate, insulin secretion, and salivation. Why? The authors explain that the brain has a vested interest in getting more grub down your gullet. It’s a single organ that uses a whopping 25% of the energy you take in from food. Of course it wants you to eat that cookie—it’s trying to keep you alive up there. MORE: 12 Fruits and Vegetables that Will Help You Lose the Most Weight Next, the ol’ noggin is a little out of touch evolution-wise. “Our brains were designed for a different kind of time, when the presence of food was far rarer than it is today,” says Charles Spence, PhD, lead author and professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. “In theory, our brains could do a better job [of reacting to food images] if they had more time to evolve to the current food image–rich landscape.” But they haven’t. So when you see an image of pizza—even if you just had some pizza yesterday and you know you could still get some tomorrow—your brain still lights up like a Christmas tree. That’s precisely the basis for the authors’ argument: Take all this scientific evidence, add in the onslaught of food imagery we’re exposed to every day via technology, and you’ve got a recipe for overeating and weight gain. via GIPHY Every melty grilled cheese GIF you’re watching, in other words, could be prompting you to gobble more than your body actually needs. And because this digital inundation is so new to the human race, we don’t really know how powerful this see-food-eat-food cycle might be. MORE: The Clean New Weight-Loss Snack that You Haven’t Tried Yet The paper even argues that we’re partly to blame. “Given the growing popularity of consumers taking pictures of food…the problem here would appear to be at least partly self-inflicted,” the authors write. Ouch. So, must we henceforth shield our eyes from cookbooks and shutter our Instagram accounts for the good of society? Will we someday see food porn magazines shielded at the newsstand like actual porn magazines? No—at least, not yet. Spence points out that the existing evidence is all very preliminary. Most of the studies referenced in the paper involved strapping people in brain scanners and showing them photos of food—not an ideal approximation of real life. Plus, for every bacon-spewing food-porn Instagram account out there, we’d like to think there is an equal but opposite force broadcasting enticing images of healthy stuff. (Like, say, EatClean.com. Wink wink.) We’ll keep on providing the sexy kale photos (maybe with the occasional apple-bacon pie). The choice to avert your eyes is up to you.
