(Image source from: Berkeley News - UC Berkeley)

Every so often when you enter a restaurant, the aroma of pizzas, burger or sandwiches may entice you but you refrain yourself from eating them due to high calorie it contains.

Are you on a diet and still can’t control yourself from eating high-calorie food? Okay, here’s a piece of good news for you. A study suggests that smelling the food items for longer than 2 minutes will make you feel satiated.

The researchers, including one Indian origin, said that ambient food scent can directly satisfy the belly because the brain does not necessarily differentiate the source of sensory pleasure.

"Ambient scent can be a powerful tool to resist cravings for indulgent foods. In fact, subtle sensory stimuli like scents can be more effective in influencing children's and adults' food choices than restrictive policies," said lead author Dipayan Biswas, Professor at the University of South Florida.

A direct connection has been discovered between the length of exposure time and whether or not one will indulge. A series of tests were also conducted by the researchers using a nebulizer that individually gave off the smell of healthy and unhealthy food items (strawberries versus cookies, pizza versus apples).

The findings, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, showed that participants exposed to the scent of cookies for less than 30 seconds were more probable to want a cookie.

However, those exposed for longer than two minutes did not find that cookie desirable and picked strawberries as an alternative. The results were similar in case of the scent of pizza and apples.

The study further noted that since non-indulgent foods do not give off much of an ambient scent, they are typically not connected with reward, thus they have little influence on what we order.

Since high caloric foods are high in sugars and fats, the extraordinary consumption of these type of foods increase the risk factors for heart disease, obesity type-2 diabetes as well as cancers.

-Sowmya Sangam