We have all heard the age old phrase you are WHAT you eat, but a new study shows that WHERE you are eating can have a huge impact on your eating habits. Location can determine why you eat what you do, and how much you are eating regardless of the taste of the food.

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The study was conducted by giving people at a movie theatre a bag of popcorn. Some of the movie goers received fresh popcorn while the other received stale popcorn. Anyone that has had stale popcorn knows it is nowhere near as appetizing as fresh popcorn. One would think those that received stale popcorn would have eaten less of it because of its unappealing taste. Surprisingly both the stale and fresh popcorn eaters ate about the same amount.

The next part of the study was to do the same thing, give some people stale and some people fresh popcorn, but in a meeting room. These people were also watching movie clips. In this instance the people with the stale popcorn ate much less than the people with fresh popcorn.

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Researchers have concluded that places help to establish eating habits, and because a person associates eating popcorn with being at a movie theater they would eat popcorn regardless of taste! I find this crazy, as I, like many others always assumed that if something did not taste good I would not eat it no matter where I am.

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Looks like we’ve all been wrong all this time and need to start paying attention to if we are eating out of habit or not. So in order to avoid overeating, especially on foods that are not even tasty, try to break the location habits. Stop getting popcorn at the movies, or eat with your non-dominant hand, or try hanging out with friends at other non-food related locations! Meet your girls for a mani pedi at a nail salon Pittsburgh, like Verve 360! There’s no bad eating habits associated with that.