When your football team wins, you eat healthier food

The Washington Post:

By the time the Super Bowl is over Sunday night, you may have munched on a few too many nachos and chicken wings, and you might be almost as sick of cheap beer as you are of expensive TV ads.

But if you’re a fan of the Denver Broncos or the Carolina Panthers, the game’s effect on what you eat could linger into Monday, too. Our research has found that people eat worse than they normally do on the day after their football team loses, and better than usual on the day after their team wins. They eat even more junk food if their team loses a close game.

…

Our own study, published in the journal Psychological Science, focused on the effect of football wins and losses on what people eat. We analyzed the daily food consumption of a representative panel of about 700 U.S. households during two seasons of the National Football League. Data on food consumption was collected by NPD Food World, a market research company, from a rolling panel of Americans (mean age 38, 52 percent female) living in major U.S. metropolitan areas. Panel members were asked to keep diaries of their daily food consumption for two periods of 14 days separated by one year. Because we did not have information about what team participants rooted for, we simply assumed that they supported the major team in their metropolitan area.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post