I Think, therefore I'm fat...

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Food for thought: Thinking makes us pig out
Study: Intellectual activities make people eat more than when resting
By Robert Roy Britt

Food for thought: Intellectual activities make people eat more than when just resting, according to a study that sheds new light on brain food.

This finding might also help explain the obesity epidemic of an increasingly sedentary society in which people still have to think now and then.

Researchers split 14 university student volunteers into three groups for a 45-minute session of either relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, or completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.

The scientists had determined beforehand that the thinking sessions consumed only three calories more than resting. After the sessions, the participants were invited to eat as much as they pleased.

Though the study involved a very small number of participants, the results were stark.

The students who had done the computer tests downed 253 more calories, or 29.4 percent more than the couch potatoes. Those who had summarized a text consumed 203 more calories than the resting group.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose levels than rest periods, perhaps owing to the stress of thinking.

The researchers figure the body reacts to these fluctuations by demanding food to restore glucose, a sugar that is the brain's fuel . Glucose is converted by the body from carbohydrates and is supplied to the brain via the bloodstream. The brain cannot make glucose and so needs a constant supply. Brain cells need twice as much energy as other cells in the body.

Without exercise to balance the added intake, however, such "brain food" is probably not smart. Various studies in animals have shown that consuming fewer calories overall leads to sharper brains and longer life , and most researchers agree that the findings apply, in general, to humans.

And, of course, eating more can make you fat.

"Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries," said lead researcher Jean-Philippe Chaput at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada. "This is a factor that should not be ignored, considering that more and more people hold jobs of an intellectual nature," the researcher concluded.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
© 2008 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
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Based on what I've seen of the majority of the human population - thinking is a lost art... Lemming behavior is what's in... So we've got a new week and a new excuse for obesity :)
 
Experimental Physicist here. :seeya:

I think A LOT. Know wonder I'm fat...is this an excuse to slack off at work too? You know, to help with the dieting?
 
LOL. During tax season, I think a lot. In the off season, not so much. My records say that I ate about 100-150 calories more per day during the height of tax season, while continuing to lose at the same rate. So whatever those poor college students were doing for 4 calories an hour, I was doing for more like 10 calories an hour.

I will say that I was ravenously, ravenously hungry all through tax season, which had not been the case beforehand. Constant nibbles did not stave off the feeling of impending starvation.

I've never been able to lose weight during tax season before, but I haven't typically gained during it, either. Too many days where you go from 8am to 8pm with no time to grab a bite to eat - and then at the end, you're too tired to eat much.
 
Iq scale

So maybe we should start trying to dumb down so we don't get fat when we get smart. I seriously hope that this study disappears and some high school doesn't pick it up. Soon we will be more worried about our IQ for being overweight.
 
As much as I would like to lose weight...

I'd rather be smart and fat than thin and stupid.

I'm guessing I'll be able to "think" of a way to lose weight. I'm sure it will be easier than adding intelligence.
 
This is very interesting. I'd never heard that intellectual thought makes you eat more. Why is that, I wonder?
 
Off course we have to eat more everytime our brain has done a hard work. My friend is a chess player and he can eat three meal portion just for lunch
 
I've always suspected this and at least now there is some sort of research being done.

I have to use my brain a lot (I'm a PhD student in English) and I know for a fact that my body tries to take in more calories. I first noticed it when I started my BA (also around the time I started putting on weight, but that also had to do with bad habits) that I would have to have something high in calories to snack on if I had a lot of work to do all at once.

And in the last year that I've changed my lifestyle to lose weight I have become much slower in my work and am in fact quite behind.

I'm not using it as an excuse, but I specifically remember saying to my girlfriend a couple of months after I started to try and lose weight that I felt great, and wasn't hungry ever, but that my brain wasn't working as fast as it used to. Not just in academic terms, but also if terms of humour, like if I was out with a group of friends. I had put it down to be less wired on sugar.
 
That's funny... now that I think about it there was one guy I dated for a while that was not very smart... and he was thin as a rail.
 
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