They make people binge, not starve.
A new Australian study reveals that advertising affects eating behaviour in a way we wouldn’t expect. Instead of making young woman starve themselves, it seems that seeing images of skinny models makes women binge, instead.
The study was published in the November issue of Eating Behaviours, an international scientific journal. One of the students at the University of New South Wales, Fiona Monro, is just as surprised by the results.
"We would expect people who value the way they look would be reminded by viewing the image and not eat," she says. "We're not sure why we found the reverse but possibly because of stress.”
After finishing a meal, the women involved in the study were asked to rank the importance of physical attractiveness, health and physical fitness to determine if they value the way their body looks more or less than the way it functions.
The next step was to show them six magazine ads for body-related products (diet pills, for example), in which some images contained idealized female models and others not.
The women more obsessed with their appearance ate more sweets after viewing these ads than the other women, who are less.
"There's no doubt these images have an effect on some women and can lead to changes in eating behaviour, especially when you consider how many images people are exposed to every day," Monro says.
