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Why you eat more at work than at home

Why you eat more at work than at home

The candy jar on your colleague's desk, your boss's birthday, the Friday afternoon drink… Do you sniff more at work than at home? Read here how that came about.

Temptations

There are usually more food temptations lurking at work than at home. Delicious treats, a colleague who fills the cookie jar again, an exuberant lunch to celebrate that the job has been won and the cheese sticks and bitterballen during the Friday afternoon snack. All snacks that you do not normally have at home.

Read also: '7x why we eat too much'

Stress and mindless eating

Research from Stanford University in California shows that sneering is largely triggered by unconscious behavior:an overloaded brain (when you have to remember a lot) and when your mind is not there (during a boring meeting or on the way home in the file). In both cases you run twice as much risk of a snack attack.

Primal instinct

This is the fault of your primeval brain, which wants to stock up on fatty and sweet foods for scarce times. The thing is, if you're busy and have to remember a lot of things, the neocortex (your ratio) gets overloaded, causing the primal brain to win unnoticed. And before you know it, the leftover cake from a birthday colleague or the bag of candy is in your stomach. Outsmart your primal brain and literally put those irresistible snacks further away.

Tips to snack less

A study from Cornell University shows that if the candy jar is not within reach, but, say, two desks away, you eat less of it. Another tip from this study:put healthy things in plain sight and hide the bad snacks, such as soda and biscuits. In this way you fool your primal brain, as it were. Do you find it difficult to snack less? With these tips to snack less, it becomes a little easier.