An experiment involving psychology students showed that stress made them more likely to choose less healthy but tastier food. Precommitment to choose healthy foods counteracted that effect. However, in all cases, study participants chose tastier, but less healthy foods much more often than healthy, but less tasty foods. The paper was published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. Precommitment is a strategy in which a person makes a decision in advance to limit their future choices. It is used when someone expects that, in the moment, they may act against their long-term interests. By creating barriers or rules ahead of time, precommitment helps protect a person from temptation, impulsiveness, or weakness of will. A common example is setting up automatic savings so money is moved before it can be spent. Another example is removing distractions before working, such as blocking social media or putting a phone in another room. In all these cases, precommitment helps align immediate behavior with longer-term goals. Precommitment can be personal, such as making promises to oneself, or external, such as signing contracts or using …