Stuffing yourself in imagination curbs stomach pangs

Here's a link to an interesting piece in the new scientist.  Researchers in Pennsylvania have found that if we think about eating a particular food it may help us to eat less of the real thing. Vosgerau and colleagues studied the effect of mental processes on habituation – the lessening of our response to a stimulus when it is repeated. The prospect of a 10th bite of chocolate, for example, arouses less desire than the first chunk did. Feedback from digestion is too slow to cause such rapid habituation, so it is thought that mental processing controls it, at least in part.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19846-stuffing-yourself-in-imagination-curbs-stomach-pangs.html