Grocery Shopping While Hungry Not Good Idea, Science Confirms

If you've ever gone grocery shopping while you're hungry, you know the task can be a challenge: Everything looks good.

Now new research confirms that grocery shopping when your stomach is rumbling is probably not a good idea.

To hungry shoppers, high-calorie foods may be more tempting than usual, the researchers said.

In the study, researchers asked 68 people to come to their lab and to avoid eating for five hours before they came. Upon arrival, half of the participants were told they could eat as many wheat crackers as they wanted, while the other half were not given any food.

Both groups of participants were then asked to grocery shop in an online store that offered high-calorie foods, such as candy, salty snacks and red meat, as well as low-calorie foods, such as fruits, vegetable and chicken breasts.

Participants who were hungry purchased more high-calorie products, the researchers found. On average, hungry people purchased 5.7 high-calorie products, while the group that ate before shopping bought 3.9 high-calorie products.

In a second experiment, the researchers, led by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, analyzed purchases of 82 people in a real-world grocery store. They compared the purchases of those who went shopping between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. (an "after lunch" period when people are less likely to be hungry) to those who went shopping between 4 and 7 p.m. (when people are more likely to be hungry).

Those who shopped between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. bought fewer low-calorie products compared with those who shopped between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. (buying eight products versus 11 products).

"Even short-term food deprivation can lead to a shift in choices such that people choose less low-calorie, and relatively more high-calorie, food options," the researchers wrote in the May 6 issue of the Journal for the American Medical Association.

The findings suggest "people should be more careful about their choices when food-deprived and possibly avoid choice situations when hungry by making choices while in less hungry states," the researchers said.

Pass it on: Grocery shopping while hungry may lead to unhealthy food choices.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily .

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T. rex bigger than thought, and very hungry

Visitors watch a full body scan of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed ''Sue''.

Credit: Reuters/Handout/The Field Museum

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON | Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:39pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Tyrannosaurus rex grew faster and weighed more than previously thought, suggesting the fearsome predator would have been a ravenous teen-ager, researchers said Wednesday.

Using three-dimensional laser scans and computer modeling, British and U.S. scientists "weighed" five T. rex specimens, including the Chicago Field Museum's "Sue," the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton known.

They concluded that Sue, who roamed the Great Plains of North America 67 million years ago, would have tipped the scales at more than 9 tons, or some 30 percent more than expected.

Intriguingly, the smallest and youngest specimen weighed less than thought, shedding new light on the animals' biology and indicating that T. rex grew more than twice as fast between 10 and 15 years of age as suggested in a study five years ago.

"At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day," John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.

"Just think how much meat that is. That's a hell of a lot of cheeseburgers ... it's a whole lot of duck-billed dinosaurs they needed to be chowing down on."

Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs were common plant-eaters that lived alongside T. rex, making them an obvious meal for the giant meat-eaters.

A huge appetite means T. rex would have needed extensive territory and they were probably relatively rare. Their rapid teenage growth spurt also suggests they must have had a high metabolic rate, fuelling the idea they were warm-blooded.

A large body mass would have come at the expense of agility and the lower-leg muscles of T. rex were not as proportionately large as those of modern birds, indicating a top speed of about 10-25 miles per hour. "It's not super-fast but they were no slouches," Hutchinson said.

The latest research, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, adds to the body of evidence that has made T. rex among the most intensively studied of all dinosaurs.

The researchers, led by Hutchinson and Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum, used scans of skeletons to build digital models and then added flesh using the structure of soft tissues in birds and crocodiles as a guide.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Matthew Jones)

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