Split-Second Judgments: How Your Brain Rates Food Instantly

Next time someone tells you to “think before you eat,” they may want to rethink that advice.

A new study from the University of Melbourne shows that the brain decides how healthy, tasty, and calorie-heavy a food is in just a fraction of a second. Rather than analyzing these qualities one by one, the brain processes them in parallel, within overlapping time windows.

For years, scientists assumed our brains prioritized taste first and only later considered healthiness — a slower, more abstract judgment. But research published in Appetite upends that idea. The team combined EEG brain imaging data from 110 participants with detailed food ratings from 421 additional volunteers. They discovered that signals linked to healthiness appeared around 195 milliseconds after a person saw a food image,