This post comes to us from our friends at Optimal Body Balance.
Have you ever found yourself eating the last french fries out their little fast food container even though they are cold and taste like nothing? Or maybe you ate a whole package of microwaveable chicken nuggets even though they were so dry you had to cover them in ketchup? Why do we eat things like that? A study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology may have discovered at least part of the answer.
Researchers were studying mindless eating and how our habits might play into the amount much we eat. For the study, they gave participants water and either stale popcorn or fresh popcorn, and had them watch movie trailers. They also surveyed the participants to find out how regularly they ate popcorn when they went to the movies.
Those people who were very used to eating popcorn when they went to the movies, ate the same amount of popcorn whether it was stale or not. People who do not normally get popcorn at the movies ate less of the stale popcorn than the fresh.
Then researchers had participants eat the popcorn while in a meeting room. When the setting was changed, everyone ate less of the stale popcorn, regardless of habit.
When we have formed an eating habit, taste doesn’t matter anymore. Which is funny because most people think they overeat because something tastes too good to stop eating it. In many cases, people are just eating out of habit and because they are distracted.
To break the cycle of mindless overeating, we need to bring the attention and awareness back to taste. This means actually enjoying what you’re eating! To get started, try cooking some simple meals made from real foods. Practice distraction-free dining; eat from a plate at the table without the TV. Switching up your routine can help as well. Don’t eat the same thing every day. Don’t even buy the same things at the store. Researchers found that even switching up which hand you eat with can cause people to focus more on taste and eat less of taste-less foods.
Source:
Stein, Jeannine. “People eat out of habit, a study finds, even when food is stale” Los Angeles Times. Sept 1, 2011.