Yes, sad movies can really make you fat.
Researchers at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab showed that people watching sad movies ate between 28% and 55% more popcorn both in the lab and in a mall theater.
The findings were published in published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2015.
From the study, people in theaters ate an average of 125 grams of popcorn when watching the tragedy Love Story compared ton 98 grams of popcorn when watching the comedy Sweet Home Alabama. That’s 28 percent more popcorn watching the sad movie.
During a Thanksgiving weekend, the researchers looked at discarded popcorn movie popcorn in dumpsters over seven cities in the U.S.
They weighed the discarded popcorn and counted the popcorn boxes.
The researchers found that moviegoers who bought popcorn and watched a sad movie, Solaris, ate an average of 55% more popcorn (127 versus 82 grams) than those watching the more upbeat movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
But don’t despair, you don’t have to avoid sad movies to keep thin. It turns out that people will just eat food that are in front of them.
That means if there are healthy food in front of them, they will eat more of those foods.
So how do you take advantage of this information?
Well, when watching sad movies, just bring healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. You’ll find that you’ll end up eating more of these healthy foods. And you wouldn’t be packing on the pounds too!
Journal Reference:
Brian Wansink, PhD; Aner Tal, PhD. Television Watching and Effects on Food Intake—Reply. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(3):468-469. http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2119643
