Environmental Cues +Eating Habit = Mindless Eating, Even When the Food Is Stale

Do you scarf down a free doughnut no matter how long it's been sitting in the office kitchen? Or, for Sunday afternoon football do you break open beers and chips even though you just finished lunch? Or have ice cream most evenings while watching TV?

Your environment can be a powerful trigger in shaping your eating habits. In a recent study, 98 volunteers were handed a box of fresh or week-old popcorn before entering a movie theatre to watch the coming attractions. A second group of 60 participants was also given fresh or stale popcorn before watching music videos in a college meeting room.  Researchers wanted to find out if people who typically ate movie popcorn would eat more of it regardless of the setting or its freshness.  They'd expected that people with strong "popcorn eating habits" would still eat less stale popcorn than fresh in the theater.  Instead, they found that regular popcorn eaters at the movies ate exactly the same amount of popcorn regardless of whether it was stale or fresh.  However, when not at the movies but in a meeting room where they did not have the habit of eating popcorn, the regular popcorn eaters eat less popcorn overall and their eating was more responsive to taste because they ate less of the stale than the fresh popcorn.  Thus, when people are in an environment where they have a strong food habit such as popcorn at the movies, the power of the food habit leads to eating, even when the food does not taste that good.

In a second study, 89 moviegoers received either fresh or stale popcorn and were asked to eat with their non-dominant hand.   This time, using their non-dominant hand, habitual popcorn eaters ate much less of the stale popcorn than the fresh. It appeared to throw a wrench in their usual movie-going behavior and made them focus more on what they were eating and how it tasted.

"We show that your personal history of having eaten in an environment in the past increases the likelihood of mindless eating when again in the trigger environment.  Although you might not be aware of it, your brain associates the food with prior consumption in that setting.” suggests lead researcher Dr. David Neal.

What to do:  Recognize non-hunger eating cues and learn to avoid the cues (i.e. drive a different way home so you do not go by the bakery) or modify your habitual response.  For example, if you have a habit of eating while watching TV, have a rule that when eating you cannot be watching TV.  Replace the TV time snacks with something else to fill the void such as flossing, crocheting, or texting.  Also, try changing your normal routine to make you more mindful of your actions -- for example, switching hands.  You can also work on transforming your environment to give you healthier food cues.  For example using smaller plates or keeping serving bowls away from the table are both associated with reduced intake.   

Adapted from article found at:  http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20111012/LIFE/310120010/1048/ENT02/?odyssey=nav%7Chead