Study: Eating Habits Make Stale Food Taste Fine

Most people I know who maintain a healthy weight or are in the midst of losing pounds have to carefully monitor what they eat.

But maybe we should be thinking more about where we eat.

And with which hand.

Eating, it turns out, is not just about what tastes good and whether you’re hungry. Certain environments and habits can actually lead you to eat food that doesn’t really taste good.

Researchers from the University of Southern California found that people who regularly ate buttery popcorn at the movies would eat just as much of the fattening snack whether it was fresh or more than a week old.

Why would someone want to fill up on something that has the consistency of styrofoam packing material?

“People believe their eating behavior is largely activated by how food tastes,” said Wendy Wood, a USC psychology professor, in a news release. “Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn. But once we’ve formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We’ll eat exactly the same amount, whether it’s fresh or stale.”

In another experiment with eating popcorn at the movies, researchers instructed some people to eat with their non-dominant hand. They ended up eating much less of the stale than the fresh popcorn.

Now that’s a trick anyone can try.

Alice Warchol is a fitness instructor and freelance health writer.

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