People choose food using different factors such as taste and healthiness, but when they exactly consider these factors vary and may tell whether you're going to have a possibly healthy life or not.
A small team of researchers from California Institute of Technology with Nicolette Sullivan, the university's graduate student, as its lead author, wanted to know how quickly a person integrates the food's healthiness in his or her choices.
About 25 student volunteers participated in the experiment. After fasting for four hours, they then sat in front of a computer and evaluated food based on taste, healthiness, and the likelihood they're going to eat one of the pairs after they were done with experiment. To come up with a more accurate measure, the researchers created a new method of measuring cursor movements up to the milliseconds. Statistical tools, meanwhile, were used to analyze the movements of the cursors (like their trajectory while the volunteers were still making their choices).
As expected, taste came first than health with a gap of about 200 milliseconds. Moreover, more than 30% of the students didn't even consider health when choosing food.
The team took the research further by determining just how fast those who exercised better self-control (or students who chose healthy options often) considered healthiness. The difference was 323 milliseconds. Those who factor in healthiness earlier are more than likely to be good at self-control when it comes to food choices. They also put more weight on healthiness than taste than the ones who belong to the low self-control group.
As for the morale of the experiment, it's simple: between taste and healthiness, the former naturally comes first. However, if you wait just a bit longer before you grab that cake in your ref, the health benefits may eventually sink in and you have a better opportunity to choose healthier options.