Just as children being enticed to finish their dinner with the promise of a treat, it appears that grown adults can be bribed into eating their vegetables. How? With cold hard cash instead of sweets, at least in the short-term.
According to the findings of a study published in the Journal of Health Psychology, paying stressed out people to eat fruit and vegetables results in increased consumption and a more relaxed state of mind. In reaching their conclusions, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder looked specifically at the relationship between financial incentives, eating habits and stress levels.
“What we know is that people tend to eat less healthy when they are stressed,” study co-author Angela Bryan, professor of psychology and neuroscience, told Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine. Bryan added that the team set out to determine if incentivizing healthy behaviours could lessen the pressure people were feeling: “So, if you see a carrot less as something like, ‘Ugh, gosh, I have to eat a carrot’ and more, ‘I get paid to eat a carrot,’ does that mitigate the effects of stress on healthy eating?”
To determine whether or not money could have a motivating effect, the researchers asked 128 participants to keep track of their daily stress levels, and fruit and vegetable consumption over a period of three weeks. One group received a dollar each time they ate a serving of fruit or vegetables; the other did not. On days when subjects reported feeling stressed, those who were being paid maintained their intake while those who weren’t ate fewer servings of fruits and vegetables.
“Obviously, we had the hypothesis that incentives might buffer the effects of stress and diet, but I didn’t think it would be this clear,” Bryan reportedly said. “I thought there might be a glimmer of something going on, so when we actually saw the effects and the size of the effects, I was pretty stunned.”
Source: nationalpost.com
