Does your lunch break consist of checking email and surfing the web? This study is a reason to power down.
A team of British researchers served the same lunch to two groups: the control group ate without distraction, and the ‘distracted’ group played computer solitaire while they ate. To disguise the study’s purpose, the subjects also completed a memorization task, but researchers really wanted to know how full subjects felt after the meal, how much they ate when offered cookies a half hour later, and how well they remembered what they ate.
Turns out, the distracted group had a much harder time remembering what they ate, so they felt less full and ate about twice as many cookies just a half hour after their meal! Have we convinced you to take a real lunch break yet?
