Abstract
Food cues that appear in the visual field capture our attention easily and can influence eating behavior. The current study investigated the influence of food-related stimuli on visual attention, considering the macronutrient composition of food items. Images representing sweet and savory foods were employed, the latter consisting primarily of high-protein foods. The participants were primed with these images prior to performing the attentional task. We found that both sets of food images elicited an emotional attentional blink (EAB), but a stronger EAB was observed for the high-protein foods, and this observation was further supported by a negative correlation between the attentional bias (ABias) and the proportion of protein consumed by the participants before the experiment, with participants who consumed less protein exhibiting a stronger ABias toward high-protein foods. These findings suggest that an ABias might also arise to facilitate the consumption of high-protein foods when prior consumption of this macronutrient is low.