There’s nothing wrong with the occasional junk-food blow-out. You’ve just been fired, or dumped, or shot in the kneecap, and you’re craving comfort food. It’s understandable. You want your pizzas, your burgers, your saturated fats. (Not that saturated fats are necessarily going to kill you these days.)

But most of the time such go-to foods aren’t really what you want to be going to – even if they’re the kind of go-tos that, well, #makeitdelicious.

Now scientists in the UK have developed a supplement that can reportedly switch off cravings for high-calorie foods while leaving an appetite for their healthy counterparts intact.

Researchers from Imperial College in London tested inulin-propionate ester (oh, how appetising it sounds!) on 20 volunteers. They found that it not only reduced the junk-food cravings of those who consumed it, but also resulted in them eating smaller portions overall.

The supplement is based on a molecule produced by gut bacteria that tells the brain when you’re full and don’t need any more food. (That’s the molecule that we here at delicious. lack, even when we’re trying to be good.)

The findings, which were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, come after years of research into the so-called “feedback pathway,” which had previously shown how eating a type of fibre called inulin can increase the production of the molecule in the intestine. This then sends the message to stop eating up to the brain.

By modifying inulin to contain the molecule, which is named propionate, the team found they could force intestinal bacteria to produce as much as two-and-a-half times the usual amount of it.

Volunteers were given milkshakes – who said that being a human guinea pig wasn’t any fun? – containing either 10 grams of inulin-propionate ester or regular inulin on its own. They then received MRI scans and were tortured with glossy pictures of food porn. (Did we mention that our Dec/Jan edition is currently on sale?)

But here’s the thing. Those who had consumed inulin-propionate ester actually weren’t tortured at all. Unlike the poor souls writhing and screaming for someone to feed them chocolate cake – which is what we assumed happened – they registered decidedly less activity in the reward regions of their brains when presented with images of high-calorie foods. Presented with a salad or a fish course, however, their appetites kicked into gear as normal.

For the study’s second course – second stage, rather – the researchers gave the participants a bowl of pasta and told them to eat as much as they liked. Those who’d taken the inulin-propionate ester ate 10 per cent less than those who’d consumed plain old inulin alone. This means that the supplement might not only help people kick their junk food habit, but also eat fewer calories in general.

One of the study’s authors, Tony Goldstone, said the results showed that “altering how the gut works can change not only appetite in general, but also change how the brain responds when [people] see high-calorie foods, and how appealing they find the foods to be.”

“If we add this [supplement] to foods,” added co-author Clair Byrne, “it could reduce the urge to consume high-calorie foods.”

We nearly dropped our deep-fried Mars Bars when we read that.