Firstly we have to understand what is a food cue. Food cues are not just the sight and smell of real food in front of you but also includes pictures, videos of foods, food advertisements, thoughts of food, emotions, places, people and situations.
Over time from repeatedly eating after exposure to food cues, these food cues evokes a conditioned response of preparing the body for digestion (increasing salivation, heart rate, gastric activity, neural activity) influencing eating behaviour and weight.
There has been recent investigations on the similarities between food cues and drug cues in activating reward regions, assigning values to these rewards and therefore signalling actions.
So how does this affect our daily lives? With this knowledge we can aim to eliminate unhealthy food cues and replace them with healthy food cues to trigger healthier eating behaviours :) Click on the image to find out how!
Source: