Ready to have your mind blown? Pull up a chair and sit down. This is BIG news!
Many people carefully study food labels in a bid to determine if the product is fattening and unhealthy. And now, research suggests the content of the label could be almost as important as the content of the product itself.
This is because scientists found people’s metabolisms speed up when they believe they are consuming something very indulgent and high in calories – regardless of how fattening the product actually is. In contrast, our metabolisms slow down when they we eat something our bodies believe to be low in calories.
Alia Crum, clinical psychologist with Columbia Business School in New York, developed an experiment where two identical milkshakes were labeled as very different foods. One was labeled as a diet drink, with no fat or added sugars and only 140 calories. The other was labeled as an indulgent treat, loaded with sugar, fat and 620 calories.
In reality, the shakes had 380 calories each. They were identical aside from their labels.
The labels created expectations for the study participants. Just as you might read a label for a breakfast cereal and determine one might be better than the other, the 46 participants in this study made judgments on the milkshake they were consuming. It was this mindset that Crum believed had a significant impact on how the body responded to the milkshakes.
In the study, Mind over milkshakes: mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response, Crum discovered ghrelin levels (and thusly metabolism) were directly related to what the participants thought they were eating. When they had the supposedly indulgent milkshake, ghrelin levels plummeted, and when they consumed what they thought was a lighter treat, the ghrelin response was far less dramatic.
In the past, scientists believed ghrelin response was related to the nutrients reaching the digestive system. But Crum’s research suggests that’s far from the entire story — that what we think about our food has a significant impact.
Bottom line
When we go into a meal or snack believing we are being deprived, our body responds accordingly, regardless of the content of the meal. But if we sit down to eat foods we believe are somehow “off limits” or far too loaded with calories to be healthy, our digestive system literally gobbles them up, responding with dramatic drops in ghrelin and a higher metabolism.
Perhaps the key to healthy weight management can be found in rethinking what it means to indulge or deprive. As a result, Dr Crum suggests that the best way for people to lose weight might be to eat food that is very low in calories but which they believe to be high in calories.
So - just to start practising- here below you find a low calorie milkshake recipe: enjoy it and think... you're drinking a high calorie drink!
Skinny Chocolate Peanut Butter Milkshake
- 2 cups of ice (optional: skip the ice and use a frozen banana)
- 1 banana
- 2 cups Silk Almond Milk, Dark Chocolate Flavor
- 2 Tablespoons Peanut Butter Powder
Directions
- Place ice & banana in blender
- Add Silk Almond Milk
- Add powdered peanut butter
- Blend well until smooth & frothy, then serve immediately
Sources: http://www.ahchealthenews.com/, http://guardianlv.com/, http://www.allvoices.com/, http://fixmoneyy2minutes.com/, http://www.livingwellspendingless.com
