# A team found it could make people believe that some foods sickened them as children.
By Rosie Mestel, Times Staff Writer
In their battle against the bulge, desperate dieters have tried drugs, surgery, exercise, counseling, creams and even electrical fat-burning belts.
Now some psychologists have a new idea: subtle brainwashing.
A team led by psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of UC Irvine found that it could persuade people to avoid fattening foods by implanting unpleasant childhood memories about them — even though the memories were untrue."...
Deliberately implanting memories also "raises profound ethical questions," said Stephen Behnke, ethics director of the American Psychological Assn.
"Say, for example, we could change a person's belief about their entire childhood," he said. "Would doing so be ethical?"...
Several problems remain to be solved before a memory-manipulation diet plan is possible, she said. For instance, it is not yet known how long the false beliefs last.
Perhaps most importantly, the scientists have so far failed to implant false beliefs about two common food items, chocolate chip cookies and potato chips....
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