Stan's Book Review: "Scent-sational Weight Loss" (Part Two)
Stan Freberg here with more on smelling your way to losing weight. A new book says it really works. You fool your stomach into thinking you've eaten. More on that, after this. [:60 SPOT BREAK]
Freberg here. I was telling you about a new book from Dr. Alan Hirsch, a neurologist who heads Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation. He's the guy who's proven that the right aroma can change people's behavior. In one experiment, he got customers to pay an average of $10 more for a pair of Nike sneakers, when they tried on the shoes in a floral-scented room. And the same was true when the scent was barely detectable. Hmm.
For his weight-loss study, he reasoned, "Don't people get hungry when they smell food?" 3100 overweight people were given inhalers with an aroma that smelled vaguely like Fritos Corn Chips. Some were so heavy, up to 600 pounds, they had to be weighed in on a hospital loading dock!
Hirsch told them to sniff whenever they felt hungry. Over six months, the average weight loss was 30 pounds. The book is called, "Dr. Hirsch's Guide to Scent-sational Weight Loss," but one early experiment sort of backfired.
Hirsch handed out Hershey's chocolate bars to medical students, and told them to sniff the bars whenever they felt hungry. The students sniffed, then ate the chocolate. "Ummm, no, no, no..."
Stan Freberg here.
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