Good news for those of us who are struggling with losing a bit of our winter weight (raises hand): A new study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience says that we can actually brainwash ourselves to eat better. Yes, please!


The study polled 200 University of Texas at Austin undergrads on their preferred snackfoods and then asked them to use a computer training program; some of the time, a photo of a food was accompanied by a short beep which signaled the user to press a button. Other times, the photo was simply shown without accompaniment. After using the computer system, users were then asked to again evaluate the foods. Researchers found that subjects chose foods that were associated with the sounds more than 60 percent of the time, regardless of what they might have chosen prior to the sound experiment. Even crazier, two months after the experiment, the auditory training stuck, and test subjects were still more likely to prefer foods associated with the sound.

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So what's that mean for you, me, and all the other chocolate addicts out there? It could mean that down the road we could be trained to prefer healthy foods over unhealthy ones -- that some day, we could make wise eating choices -- with a little outside influence, of course. [Science]