Some time ago, I read that Courtney Love installed a lock on her refrigerator to keep herself from snacking. At the time I thought, “Gee, woman, just get some willpower!” But now?
Now I’m a lot more sympathetic. I’m also of the mind that locking my fridge wouldn’t simply prevent me from snacking and thereby ruining my diet. It would prevent my husband and son from snacking, too, and thereby ruining my diet.
What, you think that sounds like I’m blaming them for my eating habits? Well, yes, I suppose I am. But I’m not completely off-base here. Turns out, watching someone snack can lead you to snack, too. And not just any snack, either, mind you.
A study at Duke University observed how undergraduates reacted when someone was talking to them while dipping into one of two bowls of snack items. One bowl contained goldfish crackers (yum!) while the other contained animal crackers (okay, also yum). Both the speaker and the observer had access to the same two things, but the speaker only dipped into one of the two.
So what happened?
The observer dipped into the same bowl as the speaker most of the time even if they’d previously stated they preferred the other kind of snack.
“A person who views someone else’s snacking behavior will come to exhibit a similar snack selection pattern,” the researchers from Duke University, University of Maryland and the University of Amsterdam said in a statement.
“This suggests that preferences may shift as a result of unintentionally mimicking another person’s consumption behavior.”
I pointed this study out to my husband this morning as he stood in the kitchen frying bacon. Fortunately, I’d just filled up on All Bran (not so “yum”) and couldn’t think of eating another bite. But, oh, that bacon smelled goooood.
“You know what this means,” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he responded. “It means that you’re going to blame me if you suddenly decide you just have to eat a piece of bacon.”
“No, silly,” I assured him. “It means that when you drop dead of heart disease from all of that fried food I’m going to have to marry me a vegetarian.”
Oddly enough, he didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did.
