Screen Time = Eat More?

Interesting study discussed by Yoni Freedhoff over at Weighty Matters

Playing Video Games Makes You Eat More?

The video game players used ~20 cal more but ate ~80 cal more than simply seated controls in a subsequent lunch.  That caloric excess was not compensated for by eating less later in the day.  Kind of a fascinating result!

Comments

James Krieger said…
Have you ever read Brian Wansink's "Mindless Eating"? He's done a lot of research on things like this.
Flavia said…
Is he the one of the re-filling bowls? Apparently that is a "new-world" thing. Europeans use internal cues to stop eating such as "I feel full" and Americans tend to use external cues such as "my plate is empty."
CarbSane said…
Not yet James. The thing about this one was eating after the gaming though at a normal "lunch". I wonder if we somehow register perceived activity?
Sanjeev said…
> Is he the one of the re-filling bowls?

some of the things he's studied and/or research presented in the book (not an exhaustive list):

refilling bowls (fed from the bottom with plumbing arranged to keep the level constant)

stale popcorn at movie theatres (to answer the question "does one eat more if given a larger quantity"?)

removing the bones from eaten chicken wings (compare to customers whose bones are left) to see if visual cues of how much one has eaten will influence additional eating

moving candies from secretarial desks to varying distances away to study the influence of ease-of-attainment to caloric intake

re-bottling wine into bottles labeled with North Dakota or California to see how much this kind of thing influences taste perceptions

substituting long, tall glasses for short, squat glasses to find how well people control for volume perception in pouring drinks

mixing many hues of candy in one bowl versus monocoloured bowls.