It seems like proving the obvious, but new research is offering up scientific support for why it’s a bad idea to shop for groceries when you’re starving.
Researchers at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab found that hungry shoppers buy more calories — specifically, up to 45 per cent more high-calorie foods.
“Fasting, intended or unintended, is a common phenomenon,” the researchers write in the journal, JAMA Internal Medicine.
Studies suggest that even brief periods of “food deprivation” — skipping breakfast or lunch — may change how the brain reacts to fattening foods. “If shifts toward a higher-calorie shopping basket occur even with short-term deprivation,” the authors write, it could have important implications for everyone from “meal-skipping dieters to overworked medical residents.”
For their study, Aner Tal and Brian Wansink, of the Food and Brand Lab, conducted two experiments.
In a lab experiment, 68 paid volunteers, ages 18 to 62, were asked to avoid eating for five hours prior to the study.
In half the sessions, people were given a plate of Nabisco Wheat Thins and told to eat until they felt full.
In the other half — the “hunger condition” — the volunteers went hungry.
All participants then shopped in a simulated, online grocery store that offered a mix of low-calorie foods — fruits, vegetables, chicken breasts — and higher-calorie candy, salty snacks and red meat.
The hungry volunteers chose more higher-calorie foods, although the total amount of food items purchased wasn’t statistically different between the two groups.
In a second study, researchers tracked people’s purchases at different times of day, based on an earlier study that showed when they were most likely to be full (between 1 pm and 4 pm) or hungry (4 pm to 7 pm).
People shopping at “higher hunger hours” bought less low-calorie food compared with people shopping at the “lower-hunger, after-lunch hours” period.
The study suggests that what people buy when they’re hungry changes even more so than how much they buy, said Tal, a post-doctoral research associate at Cornell. “People look at foods differently when they’re hungry,” he said.
“If I go to the shop hungry, my weakness is ice cream.”
He suggests people have a small snack or appetizer before shopping.