This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Erica Barris. Got a minute?

In Marcel Proust's iconic remembrance of things passed,

a taste of cake elicits a flood of memories.

Now a study finds that the stronger your memory of a particular food,

the more likely you are to choose it again.

And it doesn't matter how objectively unattractive

the food may be, which perhaps explains

why you may crave those peanut butter and marshmallow

sandwiches from your youth or can't break that fried chicken

habit when trying to diet.

The food memory study is in the journal Neuron.

Researchers asked 30 hungry young people to rate snacks such as potato chips and chocolate.

No actual food was presented. The snacks were merely disposed. as between two locations as proxies for the snacks and the hungry subjects went with

memory over taste preference. That is they picked what they were better able to

remember even if they had rated them lower in the first part of the test.

The participant's brains were scanned during the process of choosing

and the researchers found that the exercise caused increased communication between

the hippocampus associated with memory and the part of the frontal lobe

home to decision-making, which may show why when we're making food decisions,

familiarity often went out over other factors and why your shopping list looks

virtually the same week after week. Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans

60 Second Science I I'm Erica Barrett.

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