Turn off that brain to lose weight...
My attention was drawn to this by an allusion in a column in today's Guardian, though it appears to have been around for several months:
Thinking can make you fat: 'Researchers found the stress of onerous mental tasks caused subjects to overeat'.:
Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels than rest periods.
Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study's main author, said: "These fluctuations may be caused by the stress of intellectual work, or also reflect a biological adaptation during glucose combustion."
The body could be reacting to these fluctuations by spurring food intake in order to restore its glucose balance, the only fuel used by the brain.
Mr Chaput added: "Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialised countries.
I don't know: I just find this inherently implausible, a) given the tendency of people who have historically been acknowledged as Great Thinkers to have a lean and hungry look and b) perhaps they have it wrong end on, because wasn't there some research that showed that dieting women did less well on various mental and concentration tests, so perhaps you need a little flesh on your bones and nutrients in your system to think effectively?
And, are most people sitting in front of a computer engaged in rigorous intellectual activity? Somehow, I think not.
Also, am not entirely sure that supplying students with a free buffet is going to prove an immense amount, except that they will load up like whoa on free nosh. Feel there may have been a factor of them rewarding themselves for the effort they had gone through as well.
Also, does 14 students constitute any kind of viable sample? and how were they selected?
(I think this is an even smaller sample than the G-spot survey...)