Smell vs. Hunger

It has always been known that the sense of smell seems to trigger hunger in most individuals. Once the smell is introduced to the body, the digestion system begins to "warm up" anticipating its food. Dr. Alan Hirsch developed flavor crystals to intensify the flavor of food which might make people eat less. ""It made some anatomical sense," Hirsch says, because of a connection between the nose and the brain. The reason people feel full, he says, is because it's usually our brains, not our stomachs, that interpret whether we've had enough food. This is based on how much food enters our mouth, as well as how much we smell and taste."
Dr. Hirsch employed his theory by giving dieters tubes of flavor crystals that they could smell when hungry in effort to curb their appetites. Dieters in this study lost an average of 30lbs in six months compared to the "traditional" dieters who only lost 6.
So next time you feel yourself craving chocolate, smell it-rather than eat it. It'll satisfy your craving acting as a displacement mechanism without adding pounds to your figure.
Read the whole article: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50353