With so much food available in the modern world, each crafted to be as tasty and tempting as possible, its hard to pass up on that bag of potato chips or double cheeseburger, even when you're not hungry. However, not giving in to this temptation to eat, while difficult, is necessary for your health, according to researcher David Gal from the University of Illinois at Chicago, who claims that eating when you're not actually hungry is unhealthy, according to a press release.
The study was made up of 45 undergraduate students, each of whom were asked to first rate how hungry they were then eat a meal with a high level of carbohydrates. In order to gauge the impact of the meal on their health, their blood glucose levels were measured at regular intervals after their consumption of the meal. Blood glucose levels typically shoot up after eating carbohydrate-rich meals, although this is not ideal health-wise since elevated blood glucose levels can damage the body's cells.
The results showed that those who rated their hunger levels closer to the moderate level of the scale prior to eating had lower post-meal blood glucose levels than those who were not very hungry prior to their meal. This research suggests that indulging in food with low hunger levels could be unhealthy and prompt us to reconsider the way that we deal with the constant bombardment with stimuli that promotes food intake.
The findings were published in the Dec. 18 issue of the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.
Take a look at the video below for an overview of the findings by Gal.
