Eat less sweets when you're busy

Research published in the American Journal of Experimental Psychology by the University of Sussex in the UK says that if we concentrate enough at work, it will help us control our appetite and not overeat.

The study was divided into two parts. In the first study, scientists asked volunteers to look for a specified number of letters in a large number of letters. Volunteers in the process of completing the task, scientists let a number of pictures in turn flashing on the edge of the computer screen, the volunteer's afterglow can see, these pictures include doughnuts and chocolate-based sweets, but also office equipment class supplies. The scientists assessed the extent to which the pictures distracted the volunteers based on the change in the time they spent looking for the letters.

In the second study, volunteers were asked to search for letters in the same way, but before they started looking for letters, each held a piece of chocolate in their hands, and the volunteers pressed a button whenever they wanted to taste the chocolate in their hands, from which the scientists assessed the volunteers' liking, hunger and appetite for the chocolate in their hands. During the volunteers' search for letters task, the scientists would intervene several times and ask the volunteers whether they thought of chocolate at that time.

The results of the first study showed that the volunteers were less distracted when they saw the flashing pictures because of the high mental concentration required to find the letters; the results of the second study showed that the number of times the volunteers wanted to eat chocolate during the high-intensity attention task was less than half of that during the low-intensity attention task, and less likely to produce a chain reaction of liking, hunger, and desire to eat when they thought of chocolate.