Researchers at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh have turned inside out an assumption about thinking about food as the trigger to eating more of it.

The implications of the research are wide-ranging with scientific repercussions about pleasure and morality.

Years more research is required on this topic, but the Carnegie Mellon researchers are convinced that allowing oneself to think about a food doesn’t necessarily trigger the impulse to eat it. A core assumption in diet and obesity research is that one should avoid thinking about foods we love and go shopping instead.

We lose weight and the American economy prospers. (Just kidding … sort of.)

Not so fast say the Carnegie Mellon scientists who found that thinking about the pleasures of certain foods was enough to quench the desire to eat it. Over time, people ate less of the foods they focused on.

The implications of this discovery on issues of pleasure and morality may be far-ranging.

We know, for example, that the states with populations that condemn pornography consume the most of it, based on their IP addresses. The patriarchal need to monitor female behavior and keep women religious and pious is based on the assumption that if we feel sensuality in our lives, we will behave like tomcats.

In reality, the ideal path may lie on the road to responsible pleasure, an idea that is the center of thinking at Anne of Carversville. Read on at Carnegie Mellon.

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