Craving Chocolate? Simply Watching Junk Food Videos May Satisfy The Urge

Study Suggests That Clips Of Indulgent, Unhealthy Cuisine Can Help Dieters Eat Less

Conventional dieting wisdom says to avoid drool-worthy food photos online. All those cheeseburgers and chocolate desserts will only make hunger worse. But a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior flips that advice on its head. For people actively watching what they eat, browsing indulgent food content on digital media may actually curb the urge to snack, not increase it.

Researchers Esther Kang of the University of Bristol Business School and Arun Lakshmanan of the State University of New York at Buffalo found evidence for something they call “cross-modal satiation,” a process in which visual exposure to food may reduce the desire to eat without taking a single bite. Looking at indulgent food content, they found, might dial down cravings rather than amplify them.

That’s notable when, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 60% of women and 40% of men in the United States report being on a diet, fueling an estimated $257 billion weight-loss industry. If food content online can actually help dieters rather than sabotage them, it could shape how health apps, social media platforms, and cooking shows approach the images they put in front of audiences.

How Browsing Food Content Affected Dieters

Three experiments built on each other using an online food blog featuring video clips of cooking and eating shows, some highlighting healthy dishes and others indulgent, high-calorie fare. Researchers tracked how many clips participants clicked on and how long they watched.

In the first experiment, 247 online participants from the eastern United States, aged 20 to 76, were split based on whether they were currently dieting. Dieters clicked on nearly twice as many clips when the content featured unhealthy food (about 3.95 clips on average) compared to healthy food (about 2.34 clips). Non-dieters showed no preference either way. Dieters also spent more time on unhealthy clips, as measured by system-recorded interaction time.

A second experiment with 436 participants dug into why. Rather than asking simply whether someone was dieting, researchers measured each person’s tendency to suppress food-related thoughts, rating statements like “There are dishes that I try not to think about” on a seven-point scale. Those who scored higher on suppression were most drawn to unhealthy food clips. Participants scoring above 3.30 on the suppression scale showed a clear preference for indulgent content; those below that mark did not.

This fits the well-known “rebound effect”: when people try hard not to think about something, those thoughts bounce back with greater force. The harder someone tried to banish thoughts of chocolate cake, the more they were pulled toward watching videos of it being made and eaten.

In the Lab, Watching Junk Food Was Linked to Eating Less of It

A third experiment, conducted in a university lab with 157 undergraduate students, tested whether visual indulgence actually changed how much food people ate afterward.

Participants were randomly assigned to either suppress or freely think about chocolate desserts, either indulgent or healthier versions. After three minutes on that task, everyone browsed the food blog. As participants left the lab, a bowl of small chocolate bars sat near the door. They could take as many as they wanted, from zero to seven.

Those told to suppress thoughts about unhealthy chocolate desserts clicked on more food blog clips and then took fewer chocolates on the way out. The data pointed to a chain reaction: suppressing food thoughts led to more browsing of unhealthy content, which was associated with reduced desire to eat, which in turn was linked to eating less actual food. Participants in the suppression group also reported on a questionnaire that watching the content made them feel less hungry. Critically, this pathway only appeared when the content featured unhealthy foods. When clips showed healthier chocolate desserts, no reduction in eating was observed.

What This Might Mean for Appetite Suppression and Dieting

These results push back on the assumption that food-related media inevitably promotes overeating, an idea that has driven advice like: avoid food Instagram accounts, stop watching cooking shows late at night, don’t torture yourself with pictures of what you can’t have.

Under specific conditions, the opposite appears to hold. For dieters actively suppressing cravings, engaging with vivid images of forbidden foods might help dietary goals rather than hurt them, at least in controlled settings. Crucially, the effect requires indulgent content, not healthy alternatives, and was only observed in people assigned to suppress food-related thoughts.

Researchers suggest a dieting app could potentially serve up high-quality visuals of indulgent meals to take the edge off cravings rather than shaming users away from food imagery. Such applications remain speculative. The lab experiment relied on college students aged 21 to 31, chocolate was the only food tested in the consumption phase, and all sessions ran after lunchtime, so the findings may not hold under higher hunger levels or with other foods.

For dieters fighting the urge to indulge, though, it’s an oddly reassuring possibility: the screen might be doing some of the work that a plate would have done.

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Disclaimer: This article is based on a single peer-reviewed study and should not be taken as medical or dietary advice. Findings were observed under specific, controlled conditions and may not apply universally. Consult a qualified health professional before making changes to your diet.

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