Why eating in front of the TV makes you fat:

You consume 25% more LATER in the day without realising

People who eat while distracted also consume 10 per cent more calories at the time
Eating while distracted also makes it harder to recall the amount consumed
This means we're more likely to over-eat later in the day

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If you already feel guilty about scoffing chocolate or crisps in front of the TV, then it's bad news.

People who eat while distracted - such as while reading or playing games - not only consume more at the time, but later in the day, too.

A review of 24 past studies by British researchers discovered this could be by as much as 25 per cent.

‘Some studies have individually shown this before, but the evidence has never been put together,’ said lead author Dr Eric Robinson, from the University of Liverpool.

Aside from the fact we eat more, distracted eating also makes us less likely to remember how much we ate.

The researchers found that people who were able to recall memories of how much they'd eaten in a previous meal were less likely to eat as much later on.

The research, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, broadly categorised eating patterns as ‘attentive,’ such as sitting quietly and recording what was eaten during a meal, or the exact opposite – ‘distracted.’

Distracted eaters do not pay close attention to food and are not as aware of how much they have eaten, the study found.

‘Even though we make decisions about what and when to eat with apparent ease all the time, these decisions are actually very complex and can be easily disrupted,’ said Dr Suzanne Higgs, a study co-author and psychologist at the University of Birmingham.


The researchers searched the scientific literature and found 24 studies conducted between 1997 and 2011 that met their main criterion of involving an experimenter who actively manipulated participants' attention, memory and awareness of eating food.

All of the studies were tightly controlled and monitored, but each had different methods of manipulating participants' attention and awareness.

For example, in one study, adult men and women watched TV while eating. In another, participants snacked on pistachio nuts and experimenters immediately removed the nut shells from view.

The analysis suggests statistically significant differences between participants who ate attentively and those who ate while distracted, Dr Higgs said.

On average, eating while distracted increased the amount eaten by about 10 per cent. But it also increased the amount a person ate at a later meal by more than 25 per cent.

In contrast, enhancing memories of food consumed at an earlier meal reduced the amount consumed at a subsequent meal by about 10 per cent.

Enhancing awareness of the food being consumed at the current meal did not, however, change how people ate at that meal.

Still, in light of the overall results, the authors think that attentive eating techniques could be incorporated into weight loss regimes as an alternative to intense calorie counting.