Please note that the male/female ratio in the study, those who VOLUNTARILY signed up, is almost 3 to 1
"Forty-five people - 33 men and 12 women"
Maybe because there weren't any M&Ms!!

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People eat more potato chips watching Letterman than non-TV watchers: study

Sat Jun 2, 11:19 AM
By Anne Marie Tobin
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0...ps_letterman_1

TORONTO (CP) - What happens when you put someone in a room to snack on potato chips while watching a David Letterman monologue on television?

The person eats 44 per cent more chips than someone who has the same snack food but isn't watching television, according to the findings of an unusual study presented Saturday at the Endocrine Society Annual Meeting in Toronto.

And if it's Jay Leno, Letterman's late-night talk-show rival, on the tube, there's a 42-per-cent increase in potato chip consumption.

Lead investigator Dr. Alan Hirsch says the study was part of ongoing research into what he calls "sensory specific satiety" - the idea that if you pay attention to how food tastes, you feel full faster and eat less.

Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation of Chicago, said the investigators wanted to see whether a person distracted by television, for instance, would eat more.

"So what we did was we weighed potato chips and we had people eat potato chips, either while doing nothing for five minutes or while watching a Jay Leno monologue for five minutes or a David Letterman monologue," he said in an interview from Chicago before heading to Toronto for the annual meeting.

"And what we found is they ate 44 per cent more chips watching Letterman, and 42 per cent more while watching Leno. So the idea is . . . that if you want to lose weight, either turn off the television while you're eating or you watch a boring television show."

Forty-five people - 33 men and 12 women - were enrolled in the study. Ninety-one per cent said they enjoy potato chips, and they were all blinded to the true nature of the study. They served as their own controls.

Over three weeks, each was presented with chips and put in a room - once without television, once with Letterman, and once with Leno.

"They were told we were studying flavour of chips, and they could have as much or as little as they wanted, but they had to be there for a five-minute period," said Hirsch, who is a neurologist and psychiatrist.

The foundation where Hirsch works treats patients with smell and taste disorders caused by head trauma or other problems, such as vitamin deficiencies, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

Researchers began to explore weight issues after finding that people who had lost their sense of smell would initially gain 10 or 20 pounds, he said.

"So you figure, gee, if you lose your sense of smell and gain weight, maybe if we provided extra smell and taste, people would lose weight."

The foundation also explores how odours and taste affect people's behaviour and mood. Hirsch said more than 85 studies are currently being conducted.

Although the Letterman and Leno late-night programs were chosen for this study, he expects that findings would be similar for programs throughout the day.

"Anything that distracts you from paying attention to the sensory characteristics of the food will allow you to eat more," he said.

"While television is the obvious one to look at, also, for instance, if you eat with interesting people you're also likely to eat more because you'll pay attention to the people you're eating with rather than the food you're eating."

People trying to lose weight should have conversations with people they find less interesting as they eat, he advised jokingly.

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa, said the research "definitely makes sense."

The study is reminiscent of work done in the field of "mindless eating" by Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab.

"And certainly this is an example of mindless eating where we eat not necessarily because we're enjoying the taste, not even necessarily because we're hungry, but because we started eating and we haven't remembered to stop," said Freedhoff.

"Other examples of mindless eating can include eating in the movie theatre, baseball games, hockey games, basically any time where the attention is placed elsewhere other than on the food."

Freedhoff educates his overweight patients about how to shed pounds without drugs, supplements or products, and explains behavioural cues that surround eating.

He recommends that they sit at the table and not risk eating mindlessly in front of the television.

"If you do want a snack, which is fine, measure out the snack, how much you want, before you go and sit down rather than having the chip bowl or chip bag directly in front of you."

He has two little girls, and admits to occasionally using the television as a babysitter.

"Even with toddlers, and I think it would be an interesting experiment to do, you can see kids overconsuming watching 'Dora,' just like we might be overconsuming watching Letterman," he said.