Well, I guess fans of the Atlanta Falcons are stuffing themselves with saturated fat today. Meanwhile, fans of the New England Patriots – who saw their team stage the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history – are probably cutting back on saturated fat and possibly losing a few pounds by eating less overall.
I know this because of a study I stumbled across in my database. Here are some quotes from an NPR online article about the study:
Backing a losing NFL team isn’t just bad for your pride. It’s bad for your waistline.
A study that links sports outcomes with the eating behavior of fans finds that backers of NFL teams eat more food and fattier food the day after a loss. Backers of winning teams, by contrast, eat lighter food, and in moderation.
Dangit. Since Atlanta is in Georgia, this is going to add fuel to that whole “southerners are fatter than northerners” myth. It is a myth, by the way. As I explained in a previous post, the belief that southerners are fatter is the result of those danged Yankees lying about their weight in phone surveys. But back to the NPR article:
After a defeat, the researchers found that saturated fat consumption went up by 16 percent, while after a victory it decreased by 9 percent. “After a victory, people eat better,” says Pierre Chandon, a professor of marketing at the business school INSEAD in France. “After a defeat, people eat a lot worse.”
In many ways, the research fits with what we already know about the psychology of eating. When many of us feel miserable, we’ll down a big bag of candy. Call it a form of self-medication – when your happiness levels are low, junk food and high-calorie food provide the brain with much-needed pleasure.
Wait a minute … something here doesn’t quite make sense. Let’s put toggle back and forth between two of those sentences:
Backers of NFL teams eat more food and fattier food the day after a loss.
When many of us feel miserable, we’ll down a big bag of candy.
Backers of NFL teams eat more food and fattier food the day after a loss.
When many of us feel miserable, we’ll down a big bag of candy.
I could’ve sworn people eat candy for the sugar, not the saturated fat. And yet the study seems to be saying people comfort themselves after their NFL team loses by eating more saturated fat. Let’s read on.
Chandon and his co-author Yann Cornil, also at INSEAD, find the same thing happening with sports defeats. They tracked the eating behavior of people in cities with NFL teams and measured how eating changed after victories and defeats.
Chandon says the connection between eating and sports outcomes was off the charts in the cities where following the local football team was tantamount to a religion.
“When we look at the behavior of people living in cities where football is really important — places like Green Bay, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, then the performance of the team has an even greater impact on what they eat,” Chandon says.
After a loss, people in those cities eat 28 percent more saturated fat. A win swayed them over to eat 16 percent less saturated fat. “So, in those cities, people are even more responsive to the wining or the losing of the football team,” says Chandon.
Maybe that’s why the people in San Diego didn’t vote to build the Chargers a new stadium. Given the team’s lousy record in recent years, perhaps voters figured they’d eat less if the Chargers did their losing somewhere else.
In one part of their study, the researchers found that asking people to remember terrible sports defeats had even bigger effects on what they ate – defeats lead to a 45 percent increase in saturated fat consumption.
Well then, for heavenssakes, don’t ever talk to me about the 1984 Cubs, the 1989 Cubs or the 2003 Cubs. I might go crazy on saturated fat.
The most interesting part of Chandon’s research might not be the effects of defeats, but the effect that victories seem to have on fans. Winning seems to make people think long-term – they look forward to the next match, for example. The satisfaction of winning increases the capacity of people to withstand difficult choices – to pick the salad over the fries.
Now that you mention it, I finally began to truly appreciate the taste of lettuce right after the last play of the 2016 World Series. I just didn’t make the connection.
But I still don’t see why the researchers focused so much on saturated fat. So I took a peek at the study. Here’s the relevant portion:
We examined two measures of unhealthy eating: saturated-fat consumption and total food-based caloric consumption, both of which are major contributors to cardiovascular diseases and obesity (Hu et al., 1997). Unlike other macronutrients, which are present in all kinds of foods, saturated fats are present mostly in highly processed, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor “junk” food (e.g., pizza, cakes and cookies, dairy-based desserts).
Well, there you have it. Unlike the other macronutrients (which would be protein and carbohydrates), saturated fat is present mostly in highly processed junk foods, according to the study authors.
The only things wrong with that statement are 1) saturated fat isn’t a macronutrient (fat is), 2) saturated fats are present in all kinds of unprocessed and natural foods (meats, eggs, whole milk, yogurt, cheeses), and 3) carbohydrates are most definitely present in countless processed junk foods … including pizza, cakes and cookies, dairy-based desserts.
In fact, I’m going to step out a limb here and say that when people eat comfort foods like pizza, cakes and cookies, dairy-based desserts, etc., it’s because they want the sugar and flour. After all, plenty of cakes and cookies these days are made with vegetable oils. And as the article said, When many of us feel miserable, we’ll down a big bag of candy.
So the researchers made the usual guilt-by-association mistake: they see people stuffing themselves with foods that contain saturated fat and sugar, or saturated fat and white flour, or saturated fat and sugar and white flour, and assume the problem is the saturated fat – because the stuff is so unhealthy, ya know. Dr. Hu at Harvard said so, which means it must be true.
Chandon says he had seen the effects of the research firsthand. The same thing applies to soccer, he explains: “As a Frenchman, both the performance and the behavior of the French soccer team were so distressing, I’m sure it’s part of the reason why I gained so much weight lately.”
Let me offer some advice, Professor Chandon: the next time the French soccer team loses, skip the pizza, cakes and cookies, diary-based desserts, etc., and just eat more bacon. I promise you won’t gain any weight.
