Who doesn't crave for chips every now and then. Or a hotdog, a snack - whatever is bad for you.

What makes healthy diets so difficult to follow is the conditioning of our taste, so ingrained in our memories and habits that no matter how positively convinced we are that to crunch away at a bunch of celery sticks is better than stuffing ourselves with junk food, our thoughts will go stealthily towards a dripping cheeseburger.

But this can change.

A study published on Nutrition and Diabetes showed that the brain can be successfully retrained.

The study put a group of obese volunteers through a six-month weight loss program while gauging their reaction to different foods, scanning the areas of the brain associated with learning and addiction using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

The researchers found that after a strict, six-month diet the participants’ brains responded more actively to healthier food cues and showed a “decreased sensitivity to the unhealthy higher-calorie foods”.

One day we might react to an industrial snack made of unknown ingredients with a grimace of distaste, and ask ourselves "How could I possibly be attracted to this?".

In the meantime, the struggle continues.