The Placebo Effect Of Foods

The available evidence suggests that certain foods have a placebo effect. If someone believes these will have a specific effect, the likelihood that it will actually happen is far greater.

The  placebo effect of food is gaining increasing interest, as diet itself has grown in importance as a crucial basis for health and for combating diseases in recent years. We all know that the type of diet has an important influence on our well-being and can also make us sick. But the sham effects must not be forgotten in this context.

Various foods are advertised as magical panaceas. Others, on the other hand, are known for very specific effects that exert positive health influences. For some people, it is enough to believe in these positive effects to actually benefit from them.

So these particularly beneficial effects could be due to the placebo effect that some foods have. Can food actually trigger a  placebo effect  , as has already been demonstrated with drugs without active ingredients, sham operations or sham acupuncture? Find out more about this interesting topic today.

The placebo effect

The placebo effect has been known since 1800, thanks to the British doctor John Haygarth. Since then it has been used systematically  to test new drugs and also to treat certain diseases. One speaks of a placebo effect when a drug that actually does not contain any active ingredients has healing effects just because the patient being treated assumes that this medicine will help him. 

For example, it is now known that expensive placebos are far more efficient than cheap ones. Even if both contain only sugar, the expensive version still works much better. It has also been shown that red tablets are much more effective than blue ones!

For a very long time, the placebo effect was only attributed to suggestion and called “false medicine”. But in recent years, with the help of modern devices, it has been found  that placebos actually have positive effects on the brain that promote healing.

Studies on the placebo effect of foods

The placebo effect of food has only recently been researched. Alia Crum, a clinical psychologist and researcher at Columbia Business School, is one of the pioneers . One of her most famous experiments has to do with calorie intake: 

The doctor told a group of volunteers that they would drink a malt beverage with 640 calories. She told another group that the malt drink only had 140 calories. In truth, they were both the same drinks and had 340 calories. The participants in the group who consumed the supposedly high-calorie drink quickly felt full. But the other group quickly became hungry again.

A similar experiment showed that people can even lose or gain weight in similar situations. These and other studies have shown that there is a placebo effect in diet. The belief that a food has certain effects influences us significantly and can actually cause these effects. 

The power of the placebo effect

The ongoing studies on the placebo effect of food and in the traditional areas (medicine, therapies …) have achieved fascinating results in recent years. One of the most interesting is the result of a study that  showed that placebos have an effect not only on a psychological level, but also on a molecular and biochemical level. 

At an international congress that took place recently in Leiden, magnetic resonance images were shown, in which  the activation of certain areas of the brain after taking a placebo after the doctor advised the patient that it was a drug. 

Kathryn T. Hall, molecular biologist, and Ted J. Kaptchuk, director of the placebo study program at Harvard Medical School, have made interesting discoveries in this area. Their studies indicate the following: 

We are still far from knowing all aspects of the placebo effect. In general, placebo drugs are effective in around a third of the participants in the experiments. This means that they actually have an effect, but this has not yet been adequately researched.

As far as the placebo effect of food is concerned,  it is important to take into account that for us humans food is not just a sum of substances that we ingest to supply our organism with nutrients. It also has symbolic value and is associated with many emotions and beliefs.

For this reason, and as also emerged from the experiment by Alia Crum,  the effect of food on our organism depends very much on our attitude towards specific products. If we think they’re not doing us any good, so likely will be. But the opposite is also true: if we are convinced that certain foods will help us, there is a good chance that this is indeed the case. Everything indicates that foods have a placebo effect.