Children who played a seven-minute game devised by University of Exeter psychologists made healthier choices when asked to pick foods afterwards.<\/p>\n The game involves reacting to images of healthy food by pressing a button, and doing nothing if unhealthy foods are shown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “The sight of foods like chocolate can activate reward centres in the brain at the same time as reducing activity in self-control areas,” said Lucy Porter, the lead researcher on the project.<\/p>\n “Our training encourages people to make a new association — when they see unhealthy food, they stop<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “Many health promotion schemes rely on education and willpower and require a lot of time, staff and money, but our game potentially sidesteps these issues by creating a free, easy tool for families to use at home.<\/p>\n “The research is at an early stage and we need to investigate whether our game can shift dietary habits in the long-term, but we think it could make a useful contribution.”<\/p>\n The researchers ran two experiments, and in total more than 200 schoolchildren aged 4-11 were shown images of healthy and unhealthy foods.<\/p>\n Alongside each image was a cartoon face — happy for healthy food, sad for unhealthy food.<\/p>\n Children had to hit the spacebar when they saw a happy face, and do nothing if they saw a sad face — they were not told that the game had anything to do with healthy or unhealthy food.<\/p>\n Afterwards, they played a shopping game where they had to choose a limited number of food items in one minute.<\/p>\n “We didn’t see a total turnaround in favour of choosing healthy options, but these increased from about 30% of foods chosen to over 50% in children who did the brain training,” said Porter.<\/p>\n “Age did not affect whether the game worked or not<\/strong>, meaning that children as young as four can benefit from playing.<\/p>\n Meanwhile children in control groups — who were shown happy and sad faces mixed evenly between healthy and unhealthy foods, or images which were not food-related at all — showed no change in food choices.<\/p>\n Similar research by the study’s senior author, Dr Natalia Lawrence, has already led to the creation of an app which helps adults avoid unhealthy foods and lose weight.<\/p>\n “It’s encouraging to see that this simple computer game has the potential to improve food choices in young children as well as in adults” she said.<\/p>\n “As we all know, it’s incredibly important to encourage healthy eating habits from a young age; children in the UK eat on average three times too much sugar and not enough fruit and vegetables.<\/p>\n “This game is one simple and relatively fun way of trying to redress the balance.”<\/p>\n Porter added: “This easy game does all the hard work for you. It’s not about learning anything consciously, it’s about working with automatic responses.<\/p>\n She acknowledges that some people might feel uneasy about this, but she explains: “Playing this game is optional — unlike the constant stream of advertising designed to brainwash children.<\/p>\n “This game won’t eliminate the effect of junk food advertising or price promotions, but it might give people a little bit of control back.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Exeter press release: A simple brain-training game could help children choose healthy snacks instead of chocolate and sweets, according to a new study. Children who played… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,336,9,346],"tags":[45,374,208,227,180,73,207,511],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21319,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21264\/revisions\/21319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/mediterranean_diet_salad.jpg\")
A simple brain-training game could help children choose healthy snacks instead of chocolate and sweets<\/strong>, according to a new study.<\/p>\n