Hot Topics: Distractions While Eating Lead to Overconsumption

Recent research has revealed that eating at your desk during lunch or multitasking while having a meal leads to a greater intake of food at that moment and also for the rest of the day.

Researchers at Bristol University’s School of Experimental Psychology's Nutrition and Behavior in the UK have discovered that eating while distracted can lead to increased food intake, both in the short term and throughout the rest of the day.  Researcher Jeffrey M. Brunstrom said that "memory for recent meals influences the amount of food that we select and then consume at a subsequent meal,” and that when we are distracted while eating, we become unaware of how much we ate, which can lead to us eating even more than we normally would.

Results of this study also have a great impact on the science of eating and “add to mounting evidence that cognition, memory and attention in particular, play a role in governing appetite and meal size in humans”.

This research study, which will be published in the January issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is important because it shows that meal distraction goes beyond that meal time. Now we know that distractions during lunch at work also have an effect on snacks and meals we eat later during the day.

This study has shown how distractions when we eat can impair our memory of what and how much we ate. The researchers were looking at ways in which memory and attention influence appetite and food intake, so in their study, 44 participants were divided into two groups – a distracted group and a non-distracted group. Both groups ate a lunch comprising of nine items and one group played solitaire - a computer card game - at the same time while the other group did not play the game.

The researchers found participants who played solitaire felt less full after lunch and that the effects of distraction were longer lasting. Furthermore, when asked to remember the food items that they had been given, the participants who had played solitaire found it harder to recall the items of food consumed.

We’ve known that distractions – such as zoning out and watching television while mindlessly eating – have had an impact on consumption. But now it’s been shown that any type of distraction can have an effect on eating throughout the rest of the day, including work-related activities, checking email, playing solitaire (which was what the “distracted” group did in this research study experiment), checking social media sites, or simply doing anything other than focusing on the food being eaten.

However, “distractions” are pretty much everywhere in our fast-paced, ambitious, working society. Deadlines and distractions in the workplace are part of a majority of people’s lives, and we’re always trying to do more at once, even outside the workplace. Would a chatty lunch conversation with friends count as a distraction? Or family dinner night? Should we eat entirely alone and in silence, only contemplating what we’re eating?

Obviously, no. This research study and its results aren’t meant to make us feel bad about when or how we eat, but I think that they are important for us to recognize. Sitting in front of a TV, playing computer games, working, or zoning out aren’t effective when eating. According to Brunstrom, the results suggest that memory affects our behavior in an unconscious way, and that the study participants often consumed more food if they were engrossed in what they were doing, which meant they weren’t paying attention to what they were eating."This reveals another mechanism by which sedentary screen-time activities might promote obesity."