Your TV, cell phone and even your dinner companions could be making you overeat.
The common denominator at work is noise. Researchers from Brigham Young and Colorado State universities found that drowning out the sounds of one’s own eating — the racket of chewing, crunching, and swallowing — is linked to eating more food. They believe those sounds send signals to our bodies about how much we’ve eaten and when to stop.
The findings, published recently in the journal Food Quality and Preference, focus on “the crunch effect,” a term the researchers coined after analyzing the eating habits of people who consumed snack foods such as pretzel and chips that make a lot of noise when eaten. People who ate these foods in a quiet place where they could clearly hear their own chomping and chewing tended to eat less. Others who ate amid loud distractions consumed more food.
So eating in a quiet environment may be an important weight-control strategy. Dining amid the commotion of electronic devices, loud talkers, clanging plates and shouted kitchen instructions may be undoing some of our body’s natural inclinations to signal our sense of fullness.
The researchers note that the effect of hearing yourself eat may vary for different foods that make different types of noise. Specifically, they cite the unique sound that candy Pop Rocks make in the mouth as one that might induce people to actually eat more. Future research, they say, should shed more light on the intriguing role that sound plays in how much we consume.
For now, a quiet meal may be as beneficial as it is relaxing.