WEB DESK: It may sounds strange but a brain training game could make you children to choose healthiest snacks made with vegetable or fruit instead of unhealthy sweets, says a recent research. 

A University of Exeter psychologists came up with a seven minute game, children, after playing made healthy food choices. In addition, the game consists of healthy and unhealthy food choices.

The lead researcher Lucy Porter, “The sight of foods like chocolate can activate reward centers in the brain at the same time as reducing activity in self-control areas."

The researcher further adds,“Our training encourages people to make a new association -- when they see unhealthy food, they stop. Many health promotion schemes rely on education and willpower and require a lot of time, staff and money, but our game potentially sidesteps these issues by creating a free, easy tool for families to use at home,” noting, “The research is at an early stage and we need to investigate whether our game can shift dietary habits in the long-term, but we think it could make a useful contribution.”

Also, the researchers did two experiments on 200 school children aged 4-11. There were shown healthy and unhealthy foods. There were happy and sad faces too alongside each image, happy for healthy and sad for unhealthy food.

Children had to press spacebar on seeing happy face and do nothing on sad face. Plus, it was kept a secret that from kids that game was linked to food choices. Moreover, the children were made to play a shopping game later, where they had to choose food items (limited) in one minute.

“We didn’t see a total turnaround in favour of choosing healthy options, but these increased from about 30% of foods chosen to over 50% in children who did the brain training,” said Porter.

She further adds, “It’s encouraging to see that this simple computer game has the potential to improve food choices in young children as well as in adults."