Curbing Cravings: Can Kitchen Chaos Influence Cookie Consumption?

Anyone who has ever tried to cut back on sweets has probably heard that all it takes is “mind over matter.”
Curbing Cravings: Can Kitchen Chaos Influence Cookie Consumption?
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Anyone who has ever tried to cut back on sweets has probably heard that all it takes is “mind over matter.”

But new research by Lenny Vartanian of UNSW Australia and Kristin Kernan and Brian Wansink of Cornell University is shedding light on the way your mindset interacts with your environment to influence eating behavior – specifically, unhealthy snacking.

In other words, it’s not just your mindset that can shape your eating habits. Your environment plays a role, too. And in the case of your kitchen, a pile of dirty dishes just might influence you in ways you don’t realize.

Want Some Leftovers?

The work of Vartanian and his colleagues builds on a body of evidence suggesting that stressful experiences can impact health-related behaviors, from eating to exercise.

It also loops in the idea that your state of mind influences your behavior at any given moment. For example, a 2011 study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology showed how thinking about your friends and family can reduce aggressive behavior after you’ve been rejected by romantic partner or fired from a job. And self-affirmations, which involve writing about your most important values, can mitigate the negative effects of threatening or stressful situations.

Combining two distinct theories of behavior, Vartanian and his colleagues then reveal the unique ways in which one’s individual mindset interacts with the world to help or hinder healthy eating.

In their study, the researchers asked 100 female students to taste and rate cookies, crackers and carrots, which is what participants thought the real experiment was about: taste ratings. However, the real experiment started when experimenters then invited the participants to help themselves to leftovers.

(Zhenikeyev/iStock)
Zhenikeyev/iStock
Kari Leibowitz
Kari Leibowitz
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