Deep thinkers!
Researchers found the stress of thinking caused overeating with heavy thinkers seeking out more calories.
The research team, supervised by Dr Angelo Tremblay, measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks.
The first was relaxing in a sitting position, the second reading and summarizing a text, and finally completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.
After 45 minutes at each activity, participants were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet.
The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period.
However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests.
This represents a 23.6 per cent and 29.4 per cent increase, respectively,
“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.
“This is a factor that should not be ignored, considering that more and more people hold jobs of an intellectual nature.”
Thats what Plato or Aristotle said along with music making you a homo and athletics makes you an animal.
Nothing changes.
#1 – I’m not sure about athletics making you an animal, this sure looks suspicious:
http://tinyurl.com/62crmo
In deep thought:
Let me get this straight… if I think I’m fat, I get fatter?
Well Bush and Obama are working out alot.
Well, it was Plato, and here’s as close as I care to get:
“Music and measure lend grace and health to the soul and to the body; but again, too much music is as dangerous as too much athletics. To be merely an athlete is to be nearly a savage; and to be merely a musician is to be “melted and softened beyond what is good”
http://archive.org/stream/storyofphilosoph008848mbp/storyofphilosoph008848mbp_djvu.txt
14 student sampling?
Fail.
Plato, and Greeks in general, was an advocate of moderation. Too much focus on any one art was unhealthy. He does not mean that all athletes are beasts and all musicians are effeminate, only those who pursue nothing but.
#8–SAM==Isn’t that the point? Both in the original posting and my two comments?
Why, yes it is.
#8. You are a true scholar and a gentleman.
Regarding #2 – sorry about the bad link. Here is a replacement:
Special Ed,
“backfield in motion?”
To be, or not to be fat that is the question…
Shakesphere
I recall Rodney Dangerfield saying he was getting so fat his bath tub has stretch marks. R.I.P.
Thats why i take ‘Dums’ !!! Dums for the dummy, instant relief from thinking and using your brain.
America. The land of intellectuals.
So if this study’s conclusion holds up. Then the reverse should be true. That people in great shape, who burn up lots of calories in sports (athletes) generally aren’t intelectuals. They’re too busy pumping iron, watching their weight, and striving the surpass the next physical goal. To be concerned with curing cancer, smashing the atom, solving string theory, or whatever. Well, it confirms my idea that jocks in generally are not bright. In spite of some stupid magazine articles that claimed the reverse (probably in GQ).
Should have read BIG thinkers, makes more sense, they need hats.
I blame the American education system for this problem. From grade school, and on, they’ve probably been using food as a reward for cracking the books. Where as sport activities were looked upon as fun in themselves. And didn’t need a food reward for kids to do them. In stead they got trophies (or the teams did, that the schools get to keep for display). In school, the reward for sports is generally having to do good intellectual subjects, like Math and History. The schools get more money for having sports teams that can beat other schools teams. These contests get the most public recognition. While the purely academic contests are always on the back burner of the reward cycle. You hear about a Spelling Bee maybe once a year. But all year long about the school’s football team’s progress.
The teams spend hours kicking a ball around, without a meal break. While the spectators spent the same time watching them, eating and eating and eating the concession food. So basically we reward people with food, for not being involved in physical pursuits. Or they’re inactive pursuits are being exploited by the snack food industry. Which simply can’t do the same thing to the sports jocks. Though they’ve tried with their high calorie “sports drinks”.
Let’s face it. The movies and Tv always shows every cop smoking, drinking, and eating donuts. And every college brainiac munching away, at their text books or computers. Not working out at the gym, before solving a big case, or passing a major exam. The media reinforces the stereotype, that everyone falls prey to. But they can’t do the same for the athletes. Because they’d loose from overeating. And yet, cereal companies pay Olympic athletes to endorse they produce, even if they never eat their product. They wasted no time pointing out how much swimmer Michael Phelps eats before a competition. As if to sell the idea that that was the main reason for his success. Not the hundreds of hours of training. So we’ll gorge ourselves too, in pursuit of our less athletic goals.
Oops! Slight correction. “In school, the reward for sports is generally _NOT_ having to do good IN intellectual subjects, like Math and History.”
Sorry about that. Hard to get everything right at 3am.
Given that the brain uses 20% of the caloric intake of the body. I find it surprising that the increase in calories burned for thinking isn’t greater than that.
One book I read, sorry I don’t remember which, was pointing out that the gray matter that is such a small percentage of our bodies consumes such a high percentage of our calories makes it a very expensive organ by evolutionary considerations.
Our genitals, by contrast, are cheap, or would be if we didn’t spend so much time thinking about them.
I wish I could claim credit for such a great line. But, I can’t.
Does thinking too much cause obesity? Sure. Just ask Stephen Hawking!
Actually, the practice of blogging stupid questions causes obesity.