quarters = coins?

Yes, a quarter is a coin, equal to one quarter of a dollar. You'd have to divine from your text how that could be similar to eating an M & M.

Imagining food consumption in order to lower actual consumption has been in the news lately. It is touted as a new form of dieting.

Putting coins into a candy machine would measure the "anticipation" of the reward. So the "test" is to measure whether imagining the anticipatory steps to the actual "payoff" i.e. getting and eating the M & Ms, is enough to lower the actual amount of M& Ms eaten. That alone, is not.

Neither is imagining the anticipatory steps and eating just 3 M & Ms.

Imagining inserting the coins and getting and eating 30 M & Ms was the only thing that lowered the actual amount of consumption.

Dieting by fantasy could be a wonderful thing. But apparently, it has to be a full-blown fantasy to work.

One group was asked to imagine inserting 30 quarters into a laundry machine—which requires the same motor skills as eating M&M's, the study says

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101209-chocolate-obesity-science-mind-diet-weight-loss-eat-food/

Quote:

One group was asked to imagine inserting 30 quarters into a laundry machine—which requires the same motor skills as eating M&M's, the study says

the action of putting a coin into a laundry machine coin slot apparently uses the same physical actions as putting an M&M into your mouth



People sometimes refer to eating M&M's as popping them. The same terminology is used in some regions to refer to putting coins in the laundromat coin slot - ''I'm just going to pop a few quarters in the machine''. It's also sometimes referred to as 'feeding the machine''.

Once again, you're running into English idioms. I really think you need to put an English idiom site on your favourites list.