Development and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Puzzle Game to Decrease Food Intake: Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Virtual Reality (VR) has gained popularity in daily life and VR food cues seem to elicit food cravings as similar to real food cues. However, little is known about the impact of VR food cues on actual food intake. OBJECTIVE In Real-Life (RL), exposure to food cues in a situation where the desire to eat food interferes with the completion of a food-related task reduces the subsequent food intake (i.e., the pre-exposure effect). In this study, we examine on the one hand whether the pre-exposure effect could be replicated in RL and on the other hand whether this effect could be extended to VR contexts. METHODS The current research employed a 2 (Stimulus Type: Food vs. Nonfood) × 2 (Mode: VR vs. RL) between-subject design (n = 175). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. RESULTS We found the main effect of mode on food intake with a higher food intake after both VR conditions than after RL conditions (p = .020). Also, among female participants, we found that exposure to both food cues (i.e., VR and RL) resulted in lower food intake than exposure to both nonfood cues (p = .048). In contrast, this effect was not observed among male participants (p = .336). Additionally, VR and RL cues generated similar emotional and behavioral responses (e.g., arousal and game difficulty). CONCLUSIONS We were unable to replicate the exposure effect in our complete sample. Sub-group analyses, however, showed that for women exposure to food cues (either in VR or RL) did reduce food intake, indicating that a VR pre-exposure procedure may effectively be applied exclusively for women.