Listening to music while eating is related to increases in people's food intake and meal duration

Distraction, the desire to eat and food intake. Towards an expanded model of mindless eating

“…Theories of the impact of distraction focus on the role of memory as an explanation and predict that external factors such as watching television, social interaction or driving distract the participant from their desire to eat and disrupt their memory of their food intake (Chun & Turk-Browne, 2007;Ward & Mann, 2000;Boon, Stroebe, Schut &Ijnterna, 2002;Brunstom & Mitchell, 2006;Stroebele & de Castro, 2006;Long, Meyer, Leung and Wallis, 2010;Moray, et al 2007). The results from the present study indicate that distraction may also work by disrupting the link between food intake and subsequent reductions in hunger.…”

“…Moray et al (2007) also concluded that estimates of food intake were less accurate if participants were watching television whilst eating. In a similar vein research indicates that many other factors may distract from eating including listening to a story (Bellisle and Dalix, 2001;Long et al, 2011), listening to music (Stroebele and de Castro, 2006), playing a computer game (Oldham-Cooper et al, 2011) and engaging in a word counting task (Boon et al, 2002).…”

“…For example, it has been argued that distraction divides an individual's selective attention away from the encoding of the meal and interrupts episodic memory formation (Chun & Turk-Browne, 2007;Ward & Mann, 2000; Boon, Stroebe, Schut &Ijnterna, 2002; Brunstom & Mitchell, 2006;Stroebele & de Castro, 2006; Long, Meyer, Leung and Wallis, 2010;Moray, et al 2007). In line with this, Herman and Polivy expanded their boundary model of eating to include a role for memory and reported that when the amount consumed by participants was made salient by leaving the wrappers of the sweets nearby, participants were more aware of how much they had eaten and consequently ate less than those who couldn't see any wrappers (Polivy, Herman, 6 Hackett, and Kuleshnyk, 1986).…”

“…Moray et al (2007) also concluded that estimates of food intake were less accurate if participants were watching television whilst eating. In a similar vein research indicates that many other factors may distract from eating including listening to a story (Bellisle and Dalix, 2001;Long et al, 2011), listening to music (Stroebele and de Castro, 2006), playing a computer game (Oldham-Cooper et al, 2011) and engaging in a word counting task (Boon et al, 2002).Research has also explored the ways in which aspects of the food environment can distract an individual making it easier to overeat and harder to monitor how much is being consumed (Fisher, Rolls and Birch, 2003;Rozin, Dow, Moscovitch and Rajaram, 1998;Wansink, 2004). For example, a multitude of studies indicate that over eating can be 4 triggered by factors such as the ambience of the room, container size, plate size, variety of food and perceived time of day (Stroebele and de Castro, 2004;Wansink, Painter and Lee, 2006; Wansink, van Ittersum and Painter, 2006;Wansink and Park, 2001).…”

The genetics of childhood obesity and interaction with dietary macronutrients

“…A number of recent studies suggest that both sedentary behavior (viewing television, playing video games, doing cognitive work, and listening to music) and reduced overall physical activity along with shorter sleep duration promote the overconsumption of dietary macronutrients, particularly fats and refined carbohydrates (Stroebele and de Castro 2006;Graves et al 2007;Temple et al 2007;Chaput et al 2008;Westerlund et al 2009). The increased consumption of a high-fat diet, particularly a high-fat diet enriched with saturated fatty acids, has been found to be strongly associated with increased adiposity in overweight and obese children (Aeberli et al 2006(Aeberli et al , 2008.…”