
Too much thinking 'can make you fat' - peter123
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4043727/Too-much-thinking-can-make-you-fat.html
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dazzawazza
It's as lightly to be that people see food as a reward or stress reliever as
pleasure is derived from it.

So after a stressful session of brain work in a lab they have just one more
plate of pasta.

Interesting work but there is obviously a long way to go.

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jackowayed
There's a few issues with this study.

1) I thought that heavily using one's brain did use a little more energy than
neither moving nor thinking hard.

2) It's not at all a representative sample. It's just 14 students. There could
have been a lot of reasons that would have messed up the study when that few
people are involved.

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litewulf
Did you read the article? In direct response to 1: "The researchers had
already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three
calories more than the rest period." So, yes, it does, but apparently the
change in appetite more than offsets the increased consumption.

And as for 2, this complaint is a pet peeve of mine. Yes, bigger sample sizes
are (often) better, but sometimes you can't get a bigger sample. Size of
sample and representativeness are kind of orthogonal, if all humans were
homogeneous, sample sizes of one would be totally sufficient. (Basically,
sure, there could be uncorrected bias, but please point to a bias that you
think is unaccounted for, and not just "should have paid for more subjects".)

Honestly, it kind of sounds like you want the study results to be something
since you have preconceived expectations that thinking hard should use more
energy. I'm not trying to be combative here, but I don't really know of
anything wrong with their methodology. I haven't read the paper in question,
but presumably neither have you, so we're two people on the internet arguing
about something we haven't even read. Whoo, yay internet!

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ars
I don't think this:

"The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work
requires only three calories more than the rest period."

Is correct. It contradicts everything else I've read on the subject. It also
doesn't make sense based on how fMRI works (which detects increased glucose
metabolism).

I know it's easy for me to sit here and bash some research I didn't do, but it
just doesn't sound right at all.

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riahi
It is possible that it meant three kilocalories instead of calories?

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daniel-cussen
I think so, but that still wouldn't explain things.

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tdavis
If this were actually proven, I would be able to say I combat the effects with
cigarettes. Suddenly, smoking will be cool again! Huzzah!

