Action-packed TV programs and movies make people eat more than talk-shows, as researchers from Cornell University demonstrated in a new study published in the Journal of The American Medical Association: Internal Medicine.
The study involved 94 undergraduate students divided in three groups. One group watched 20 minutes of Michael Bay’s action movie “The Island,” starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. A second group watched the same length of the Charlie Rose talk show, and a third group watched the same clip from “The Island” but without sound. Participants were given snacks, such as cookies and carrots, and the researchers measured how much they ate.
It turned out that participants who watched “The Island” ate 98% more that the ones watching Charlie Rose, swallowing an average of 350 calories. The study showed that people tend to eat more in front of high-paced sequences, as the participants were more focused on what they watched than what they ate.
“Basically you are too busy watching TV to be watching what you are putting in your mouth,” explained Aner Tal, a researcher at the Cornell Food and Brand lab who conducted this study.
He said that the pacing and the number of camera cuts in an action program may be part of the reason why people ate more. The increase in heart rate and adrenaline secretion may also play a part. The variation of sound is a contributing factor but not a crucial one, as viewers who watched “The Island” without sound still ate more that the Charlie Rose group.
People can multi task to some extent, but Tal explains that if a show completely absorbs the viewer’s attention, they may not have enough attentional resources left to pay attention to what they are eating.
“Content that's calmer than action films, like the talk show, might allow people to be paying attention to the show but also have enough capacity left to monitor their eating to some extent as well,” Tal said.
The research suggests that if you have an endless bowl of food in front of you, you will just continue eating without realizing when you have had enough, whereas if the amount of food is limited you will take only what is available, but Tal says that does not mean people should deprive themselves.
“If they want the option to eat more, just keeping the supply of snacks away from you, let’s say in the kitchen, makes you think about it, even just for a little bit before you continue eating,” Tal added. “If you actually need to get up and get more, that might prevent you from eating more and more without realizing it.”
In a word, the more distracting a program is, the less people pay attention to how much they are eating. The type of food does not seem to matter. The study showed that people ate as much fruits and vegetables as candies.
“In this case there were no significant difference in what they tended to eat,” Tal said. “They just seem to eat more across the board, so whatever was in front of them they ate more of.”
Tal underlined that people could use that distraction to eat healthier food.
“It might be a good idea to mix up the snacks that you have and have some healthy snacks in there and that way if you’re not really into baby carrots, you might eat your daily portion of vegetables without even realizing it,” Tal said.
Follow up research will look at what is leading to this increase in consumption for different TV content, whether it is related to the pace of eating or the level of interest in a particular show. He said the research could also be extended to other areas of distraction in everyday life.
