It reads like something directly out of Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World: Scientists take people who are struggling to lose weight and implant in them a belief that strawberry ice cream made them sick when they were children. The scientists’ conditioning efforts are successful, turning a total fabrication into that which is taken to the subject as absolute truth: strawberry ice cream is bad.
While perhaps Ben and Jerry’s should be looking at a trade libel case, the scientists don’t have malice in their hearts. They are simply trying to unlock a code as puzzling as the common cold in the human body: the key to weight loss for the everyday person. According to an article appearing in the Seattle Times:
A team led by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, found that it could persuade people to avoid fattening foods by implanting unpleasant childhood memories about the food — even though the events never happened.
In a paper published in today’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Loftus and colleagues at the University of Washington and Kwantlen University College in British Columbia said they successfully turned people off strawberry ice cream by manipulating the subjects to believe it made them sick when they were kids.
The scientists say they also have successfully implanted positive opinions about asparagus by convincing subjects that they once loved the vegetable.
The method, if perfected, could induce people to eat less of what they shouldn’t and more of what they should, Loftus said. Good memories about fruits and vegetables could be implanted, along with bad ones about low-nutrient, high-calorie foods.
While this no doubt has some scientific value, it would seem that the biggest breakthrough made by the scientists here is that they have found a way to make weight loss plans even more expensive. Everyone has seen ads for the latest wonder plan: $100-a-month diet pill supplies, TrimSpa, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, exercise equipment from the Bowflex to the Gazelle to treadmills, liposuction, stomach stapling, 24 Hour Fitness, etc. I don’t have any first hand experience with any of these products — I suspect all work to at least some degree if a person is dedicated to sticking to them — but it is clear that weight loss is a big business in this country.
TrimSpa, which happens to be a diet pill and not a physical “spa” or health club, known recently for its Anna Nicole Smith ads, is one of the leading companies in this field. They currently sell one bottle (90 servings per bottle) of their signature product for $39.95; 3 bottles for $99.95. According to their website, 4 servings per day should be used. A person buying 3 bottles for $100, then, gets 67.5 days of action per $100, or around $540 per year.
A membership to my local 24 Hour Fitness would be $443 for the first year — a $79 processing fee plus $7 per week — and then you’d actually have to work to lose weight. What a downer. It is very difficult to guess the cost of programs like Jenny Craig, as each individual person pays a fee “plus the cost of food”; Jenny Craig is currently running a promotion for $6 per week — $312 per year — plus food.
Okay, so some of the plans I discussed above are fairly pricey. But how expensive do you suppose it would be to have your entire mind reconditioned never to eat anything bad for you? How many people in the whole world would have the skill necessary to implement such psychological conditioning? What would the side effects be? It’s an intriguing drama unfolding.
I don’t doubt the motives of the people involved with this study; this is intriguing stuff in the name of science. I doubt this is meant as a business plan. But would anyone be shocked if the latest wealthy, time-on-her-hands Hollywood starlet decides to try to get “programmed” to be thin? Would it even work? UCLA professor Michael Strober isn’t convinced:
[Strober] said that pressures causing people to gain weight are myriad, including rushed lives, high-calorie convenience foods and physical inactivity.
“Such systemic lifestyle issues need to be targeted by something far more comprehensive than implanting false memories,” he said.
This article has made me hungry; I’m heading to Baskin Robbins.
Nathan Novak at 6:45 pm
