Canadian Researchers Say Hard Thinking Leads To Big Meals

Anti-Globalism writes with an excerpt from a story at Ars Technica, according to which "a preliminary study from a group of researchers in Quebec suggest that working on a computer may have an additional impact on our waistlines: taxing mental effort appears to cause people to eat significantly more food, even though it doesn't burn many more calories than sitting around and relaxing. The publication, published in a journal called Psychosomatic Medicine, arose from a pilot study that the researchers were performing in order to determine whether a potential connection between mental effort and eating was worth following up on."

Comments

I am an exception

[Slur]

Long hours computing causes me to forget food... and sleep... and water... and stretching... but interestingly, not sex! Perhaps there's a study I could take part in?

On the other hand, I'm a vegan, so maybe I'm immune. I don't ever crave cheese or animal fats, having not eaten any of either for many years.

Re:I am an exception

[TeknoHog]

Me too... I don't think we are unique snowflakes here. The traditional geek stereotype for decades has been skin and bones, with the fat pizza-and-coke eating kind a relatively new phenomenon.

Re:I am an exception

[Onan]

The traditional geek stereotype for decades has been skin and bones, with the fat pizza-and-coke eating kind a relatively new phenomenon.

That's because being moderately fat used to be a healthy and attractive trait. So the geek stereotype was the opposite of that: the scrawny weakling.

These days being thin is suddenly fashionable, so the stereotype of the geek changed to be the converse of the new desirable trait.

Neither of these has anything to do with actual changes in geeks' or non-geeks' bodies. Just the whims of fashion.

perhaps

[n3tcat]

... the body thinks that due to the mental taxation, that the overall body has been taxed in the same way, and therefore is tricked into expecting that the body will require food. maybe when the body exercises or performs physically intensive tasks, it creates the same signals in the brain that thinking hard does. I didn't have time to RTFA so maybe they said that already.

consistent

[leomekenkamp]

Seems consistent with what I found happened to my body when I changed my eating habits. I now eat only fruit in the morning and after that I eat bread, but only when I feel a bit hungry. As soon as the hunger is over I stop eating. I do not get my 3 meals a day, it is more like 5 or 6 very small meals and one regular one for diner. I now fit the same jeans as 19 years ago (501, 31" / 34") and I feel better during the day; no more cravings.

I have got a hunch that eating small meals keeps one's insulin and glucose levels more constant than eating big meals.