How “eating on the go” can add on the extra kilos

We are all so busy and fitting so much into our days now that we often combine tasks that were once performed independently. Technology has made much of that possible, you can now talk on the phone while answering emails and hanging up washing, but it still comes down to personal choice. You can choose to devote your focus to one activity or you can ‘multi-task’. Unfortunately one of the activities that is frequently subsumed in others is eating. How often today have you eaten while doing something else? Not only do we eat while we do something else we even routinely eat while travelling;”grabbing a bit on the go” is part of the modern vocabulary. The problem is that new research shows that eating on the go may make you put on weight.

The study involved females who were given a muesli bar to eat under three different circumstances. One group was asked to watch a 5-minute clip of the sit-com “Friends” while eating (yes, the ethics of scientific research are often dubious). Another group was asked to walk around the corridor while eating the bar. The final group was asked to sit opposite a friend and talk while they ate.

It might be that eating on the go is such a powerful form of distraction that it disrupts the body's capacity to process the impact that eating has on hunger.

After this all groups completed a questionnaire and then a taste test involving four different bowls of snacks containing chocolate, carrot sticks, grapes, and potato chips. After they left the room the researchers measured how much they had eaten.

The results showed that the women ate more if they had eaten the muesli bar while walking around and specifically they ate on average five times more chocolate.

It might be that eating on the go is such a powerful form of distraction that it disrupts the body’s capacity to process the impact that eating has on hunger. It might also be that eating while walking somehow subliminally creates the impression of having exercised and so justify eating more later as some form of reward.

Any form of distraction makes you eat more but it seems from this that eating while you are moving around is the worst distraction of all. If you want to maintain healthy weight it’s better to “sit and savour” rather than “eat and run”.