Bad eating habits

We do not go to a movie theater very often and that is mostly my fault. Just the thought that I have to sit there in the dark for almost two hours, seems like a waist of time to me. However, when I am at the theater, I usually do not mind it at all anymore (maybe a topic for another blog someday). 


So, we had been talking about taking the kids to see a child friendly movie for a long time and a little over a week ago we decided to go and see 'The smurfs'. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, but before we went we had a little discusion about buying popcorn at the theater. 


My point of view is that going to a movie, in particular with small kids, is already a treat and eating popcorn at a movie theater just because it is available is creating bad habits. My better half's ideas were along the lines of 'We bearily ever go, so why not make it a full treat including popcorn'. 


When we came to the theater, the kids immediately asked for popcorn. My guess is that the few times they have been with friends, they always would get popcorn. Needless to say that I had won our earlier discusion, so we did not buy popcorn. The kids loved the movie anyway. 


And I was pleasently surprised that my common sense for not wanting to create bad habits, was confirmed by a recent study from the University of Southern California about bad eating habits. The researchers gave people about to enter a movie theater a bucket of either just-popped, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn. 


Moviegoers who didn’t usually eat popcorn at the movies ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn. The week-old popcorn just didn’t taste as good. 


But moviegoers who indicated that they typically had popcorn at the movies ate about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale. In other words, for those in the habit of having popcorn at the movies, it made no difference whether the popcorn tasted good or not. 


The psychology behind this is that repeatedly eating a particular food in a particular environment makes our brain associate the food with that environment and will keep us eating as long as those environmental cues are present.



If you want to read more about the study, click here