Latest Thing That Makes You Fat: Thinking. Well, Sorta.
Urgh, for both the photo and the article. Of course, the headline - which is sensationalist - isn't really what the study actually claims.
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 calculated 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 could be causing the so-called epidemic, but then again there are about 5,000 other things that could be. Just another oddball study that got press and gave someone an excuse to use a dehumanizing photo of a fat person's belly. [Thanks, M. Varner]