Organic or popular brands—food perception engages distinct functional pathways. An fMRI study

Figures & data

Table 1. Corresponding brands for each food type.

Popular brand	Organic brand	Food type
Chio	Demeter	Potato chips
Coppenrath & Wiese	Füllhorn	Cream cake
Dr. Oetker	BioBio	Frozen pizza
Ferrero	Alnatura	Nougat praline
Mars	Rapunzel	Chocolate bar
McDonald’s	Naturland	French fries

Notes: Popular brands were taken from a trade journal website (www.lebensmittelzeitung.net) listing the top 100 German food brands. Matching organic brands were taken from a poll of the top organic food brands in Germany, conducted by the German magazine “Kraut und Rüben”.

Figure 1. Task summary: One block consisted of three stimuli presenting either organic or popular food brands for 3 s, divided by an interstimulus interval (ISI) of 1–3 s.

Table 2. Reaction times and responses for each task and experimental condition.

Factor	Mean response time (SD) in sec.	# yes-responses (%)
Organic food brands	Healthy: 1.29 (0.25)	12.67 (22.01)
	Tasty: 1.34 (0.26)	3.00 (6.60)
Popular food brands	Healthy: 1.05 (0.19)	65.00 (28.40)
	Tasty: 1.12 (0.20)	73.10 (24.42)
Control (yes = arrow to left direction)	0.69 (0.12)	49.24 (2.05)

Note: Organic and popular food brand factors include responses regarding healthiness and tastiness.

Figure 2. (A) Neurofunctional level of processing of popular > organic food brand; vmPFC = ventromedial prefrontal cortex, x, y, z coordinates, MNI. (B) Neurofunctional level of processing of organic > popular food brand; dlPFC = dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, x, y, z coordinates, MNI.

Table 3. Brain regions with higher activation in response to popular than to organic food brands

Cluster	Brain region	kE	Z-value	x	y	z
1	vmPFC (superior frontal gyrus)	1,309	4.45	10	44	−4
2	Sensorimotor cortex	1,153	4.60	−46	−24	56

Notes: Right (R.) or left (L.) hemisphere. kE = size in voxels (2 × 2 × 2 mm). The x, y and z peak coordinates are in the MNI stereotactic space. t-test Z-values.

Table 4. Brain regions with higher activation in response to organic than to popular food brands

Cluster	Brain region	kE	Z-value	x	y	z
1	R. inferior frontal gyrus	556	4.00	36	14	−16
2	L. inferior frontal gyrus	488	3.49	−46	24	−2

Notes: Right (R.) or left (L.) hemisphere. kE = size in voxels (2 × 2 × 2 mm). The x, y and z peak coordinates are in the MNI stereotactic space. t-test Z-values.