Study: Boredom May Cause People to Eat Fatty, Sugary Foods

People do some weird and crazy stuff when they are bored, like posting some random thoughts on the social media, videoing themselves lip synching do modern songs and copying the moves of their favorite action star. However, a new study shows that boredom can not only make people do weird stuff, it can also make people crave for sugary and fatty foods.

Researchers from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) conducted two distinct studies to show the link between boredom and food choices.

The findings of their study were presented last April 27, 2016 at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society.

For the first study, the researchers asked each of the 52 participants to complete a questionnaire regarding their food preferences before and after performing a boredom-inducing task of repeatedly writing the same set of letters.

On the other hand, the second study was performed by letting the participant watch either a boring or a funny video. While the participants are watching, a wide variety of healthy and unhealthy snacks were laid out in front of them. Each bowl of the snacks was weighed in before and after each trial to measure how much the participants ate from each bowl.

Upon analyzing the results, the researchers discovered that people are most likely to crave unhealthy foods like chips, sweets and fast foods after finishing the repetitive task. Meanwhile, the second study shows that people who were asked to watch a boring video tends to eat the unhealthy snacks.

According to the authors of the study, their findings supports past theory that "boredom is related to low levels of the stimulating brain chemical dopamine and that people try to boost this by eating fat and sugar if they cannot alleviate their boredom in some other way."

In their press release, the researchers encourage people designing heath education campaign needs to take into account boredom in making healthier food choices. This includes boredom in workplace, school or at home.