In Maryland, a new Johns Hopkins University study has verified that junk food images are almost twice as distracting as health food pictures when people are hard at work. The study also found that after a few bites of candy, people found junk food no more interesting than kale.
All of the pictures distracted people from the task, but the researchers found things like doughnuts, potato chips, cheese and candy were about twice as distracting. The healthy food pictures — things like carrots, apples and salads — were no more distracting to people than non-foods like bicycles, lava lamps and footballs.
Next, the researchers recreated the experiment, but had a new group of participants eat two fun-sized candy bars before starting the computer work. The researchers were surprised to find that after eating the chocolate, people didn’t find the high-fat, high-calorie food images any more distracting than healthy foods or other pictures.