Food for Thought

How many of us have heard about the pitfalls of food and mindless eating? You know, eating whatever it is in front of us while we watch television, a movie or chat with friends.

Of course, mindless eating can lead to unwanted pounds as it’s an activity typically associated with snack-type foods like potato chips, cookies, candy or bonbons. 
So if mindlessness causes weight gain, putting our minds to work ought to have the opposite effect, right? Well, according to some researchers, it’s thinking tasks that contribute to weight gain more than mindlessness.

The Quebec University researchers who make this claim say that the brain’s mental processes are more taxed when performing thinking-based tasks and as such, rely on the body’s glucose stores for fuel. This stimulates the appetite, causing an increased consumption of calories. This may explain the prevalence of obesity in the country, and may help readers identify whether a greater amount of exercise is needed to counteract their mentally (as opposed to physically) taxing jobs.

The study itself involved 14 college students, all women between the ages of 20 and 30 with no history of eating disorders or other weight-related issues. The women were separated into groups and told to perform one of three tasks: sit and relax, read a document and write a brief summary of what they’d read, or perform a number of different tasks that tested their attention and memorization skills. Each of the tasks took no more than 45 minutes. At the conclusion of their respective tasks (all were tested separately), they were free to eat whatever they wanted, however much they wanted (a large buffet of food was provided). The study itself was spread out over two months, with the women coming in once every two weeks.

Now, logic would suggest that the mental exertion of thinking creates a greater burning of calories. And while the researchers found that this indeed was the case, the comparison of calories burned among the groups was virtually negligible – just a three calorie difference!

Where there was a big difference, however, was in the amount of calories consumed among the three groups of women. The women that sat and rested ate the least, the reading group ate about 25 percent more than the sitting group (203 more calories) and the thinking group ate 30 percent more than the sitting group (253 more calories).

What explains the discrepancy in caloric intake? Researchers believe it has something to do with the amount of glucose the brain uses for energy, thus stoking the body’s appetite to a greater degree in comparison to when the brain is in a relaxed state. But unlike physical exercise, thinking doesn’t burn calories to any significant degree, leading pounds to pile on to the ol’ waistline.

While the results of this study are certainly interesting, I must say, I’m not entirely moved by these results. For one, the study was very small and the participants were confined to women (the researchers themselves say that men and women have different reactions to stress-related activities, women tending to eat more than men). These two things make it difficult to extrapolate the results to a wider population.

Nevertheless, their results are interesting and certainly worthy of further research (the researchers say more analysis is set to take place involving 100 men and women).

In the meantime, do some self-introspection. Do you tend to eat a lot while at work? Maybe you’re eating because it’s habit or because it’s comfortable, not necessarily because you’re hungry. If that’s the case, don’t quit your job or stop thinking – just reconsider the foods you’re eating and whether you need to increase the activity you’re doing outside of work. It’s something worth thinking about.