London - Are you reading this while holding a sandwich in one hand and tapping out an email on your phone with the other?
Then for the sake of your health, you should probably stop, save it for later, and concentrate properly on your food.
That’s what health experts are now advising – because while dining “al desko” at work or eating while walking down the street will save you time, it may also be helping you to pile on the kilos.
Research by health psychologists at Surrey University has found that if we eat while distracted we effectively “forget” that we have eaten – leading to further snacking and inevitable weight gain. In their study, sixty volunteers were given a cereal bar to eat under three different conditions.
The first group was asked to watch a five-minute clip of a TV show while eating, while the second group consumed the cereal bar as they walked around the corridor. The third group was simply asked to sit opposite a friend and have a conversation as they ate. After the initial experiment, the participants completed a follow-up questionnaire and a taste test with four different bowls of snacks.
The results published in the Journal of Health Psychology, showed that the volunteers who had eaten the initial cereal bar whilst walking around ate five times as many calories at the taste test.
Those who were watching television also ate more – but the volunteers who had been sitting down with a friend ate the least in the follow-up test.
Although the team did not test people who ate at a desk, lead author Professor Jane Ogden said the same principle applied.
“Any form of distraction, including eating at our desks can lead to weight gain,” she said. “Making time for lunch and sitting down at the table is actually good for our waistline.”
Daily Mail