Researchers next plan to test whether people can be misled to believe that they really liked certain vegetables when they were children, and whether that will make them more inclined to eat them as adults.

In the first study of its kind, published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues discovered that people can be led to believe they got sick as children from a specific food, such as strawberry ice cream. As a result, they became less inclined to eat strawberry ice cream as adults.

"We believe this new finding may have significant implications for dieting," said Loftus, a distinguished professor at UC Irvine.

"While we know food preferences developed in childhood continue into adulthood, this work suggests that the mere belief one had a negative experience could be sufficient to influence food choices as an adult," she added.

Establishing an Aversion

After 204 students completed questionnaires about their food preferences, they received computer-generated analyses -- some of which included false feedback indicating they had gotten sick from eating strawberry ice cream as a child.

Researchers then used two techniques to encourage the participants to process the false information, which resulted in 22 percent and 41 percent of the participants believing they had such a childhood experience. Some of them even provided details of the planted experience, such as "May have gotten sick after eating seven cups of ice cream."

Both groups showed a similar tendency to want to avoid that food now that they "remembered" getting sick from it as a child.

"People do develop aversions to foods," Loftus noted. "For example, something novel like b