Why do you eat when you are bored?

Scientific research explains why we tend to eat when we are bored.

Is it true that when you are bored you tend to eat more, especially snacks and junk foods, to pass the time? A group of researchers investigated this trend through a study, trying to understand if boredom really incentives you to eat to seek rewards.

During the experiments some subjects were shown a documentary, others, for a whole hour, a repeated 85-second video of an indoor tennis match. Some were given a bowl of M & M's while others had a device that could hit them with a slight electric shock.

The study concluded that boredom actually drives people to seek stimuli. Those who watched the repeated clip, in fact, ate and gave themselves more shakes than those who watched the documentary. However, the type of stimulus is not relevant: in fact the number of shocks and M & M's eaten was similar.

According to the researchers, therefore, when you eat out of boredom, this does not happen to satisfy a need for well-being but simply to escape the monotony by doing something different.