Research Suggests That Being a Fan of a Bad NFL Team Is Making You Fat

Sports Illustrated:

As if wearing an adult-sized replica jersey, yelling at the TV, and paying extortionary sums for personal seat licenses weren’t evidence enough, science has come along and confirmed what everyone already knew: Football makes fans do stupid things. Or, as it were, eat stupid things. This is according to professor Pierre Chandon and PhD candidate Yann Cornil of INSEAD Business School, who recently published a study in Psychological Science detailing how losses drive disconsolate fans into the arms of saturated fats.

For their research, the duo charted—over the course of two 14-day periods spaced one year apart—the saturated fat and caloric consumption on Sunday through Tuesday of 726 participants who lived in major cities. The subjects were organized into four groups: People whose city’s team won / lost / didn’t play on a given Sunday, and also people who live in an area without a team. (To simplify, and not because it’s funny, the Jets and Raiders were disregarded in NY and the Bay Area, respectively.)

Read the whole story: Sports Illustrated