Watch your weight closely? Then, you better refuse to watch cooking TV shows, even if they promote healthy food, American psychologists assure. And they have a basis for such a conclusion - the results of a thorough study conducted at the Hobart and William Smith colleges in New York City.
To participate in the experiment, experts invited 80 people, approximately equal in physique and age. All study participants were divided into two groups of 40 people. The first one was to enjoy watching popular cooking shows, while the other group, during the same time, needed to watch various programs about nature. In this case, each participant in the experiment was given three bowls, which contained the same servings of chocolates, cheese and raw carrots - all of them were pre-weighed, and their weight was recorded by scientists.
At the end of the allotted time, all the bowls issued to the participants were collected by specialists, after which each of them was again weighed. By calculating the difference in their weight before and after the main part of the experiment, as well as analyzing the data, psychologists found that people who watched programs about nature were mostly satisfied with only carrots and cheese, while, like the audience of culinary programs, their favorite product of the three proposed steel chocolates.
As suggested by scientists, such a reaction of people to "television food" may be a consequence of the specific work of our brain. In particular, watching programs devoted to cooking, a person has a craving for food at a subconscious level, which, in turn, leads to the activation of taste buds in the mouth - this process affects a significant increase in appetite, inciting us to consume high-calorie foods .
