Really? Never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach

Anecdotally, I know it’s a bad idea to go shopping for groceries when I’m hungry.

I buy all kinds of crap.

According to Anahad O’Connor writing in The New York Times, the weight loss maxims found in diet books do not always hold up in the real world. So two dont.shop.hungrey.13researchers at Cornell University recently devised an experiment that put this notion to the test.

The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, was carried out in two phases. In the first, 68 men and women were brought into a lab on two separate days after having been told not to eat for five hours. Then they were allowed to “shop” (stop writing with dick fingers) for food in a simulated grocery store, which offered low-calorie options like fruits, vegetables and chicken breasts, as well as higher-calorie junk foods.

Before shopping, half of the subjects were given a snack. Both groups ultimately purchased a similar number of items, but those who shopped while hungry picked the highest-calorie foods.

In the second phase of the study, the researchers followed 82 actual shoppers in a grocery store. Once again, they found that people shopping at times when they were most likely to be hungry opted for the foods that were more calorically dense.

The bottom line:

Shopping for groceries on an empty stomach does in fact influence food choices.

Fail: ‘Moms will change food-buying habits in 2013’

Girls play hockey, boys can cook and shop for food.

Gender don’t matter much.

doug.sorenne.cook.dec.12But it does to Fleishman-Hillard, which sucks at public relations.

I’ve had some dealings with the PR behemoth over the past 20 years and always left wondering, why do people keep hiring them?

According to Fleishman-Hillard and TheMotherhood.com, 96 per cent of American mothers plan to make changes to their food-buying habits in 2013, according to some dumb-ass survey.

The low-lights, as reported by Media Post, say moms place higher priority on the opinions of bloggers and peers than that of experts like doctors and dietitians, and that moms use cooking sources such as AllRecipes.com (25%), Pinterest (19%) and FoodNetwork.com (15%).

Moms also rely upon food-based TV programs and the online counterparts of food magazines.

Cooper Munroe, co-founder of TheMotherhood.com, said, “Food brands must evaluate how … to deliver the right messages, mom to mom.”

I have five daughters. I do most of the shopping and food prep; my father has been doing the shopping and prep for decades (although he didn’t start out there); one of my brofriends in Australia braun.hockey.ontis a chef, with a PhD, who took a 40 per cent appointment to help raise his young daughters; we both see a lot of dudes at the places we shop for food.

The argument cuts both ways; by focusing on moms only, the survey geniuses – and the people who pay them – are missing half the market.

The survey folks would figure that out if they ever went to a grocery store.