Dieting can make people aggressive

Exerting enough effort to stick to a healthy diet can make you irritable and even give you a taste for more violent films, says a study

Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet?

The researchers recruited 239 undergraduates (72% of them female) to test the effect of snack choice.

Students chose between an apple and a chocolate bar and were also asked to select one of eight films, divided between plots that featured anger and revenge and those that did not. For instance, participants could either chooseHamlet, in which Shakespeare's young Prince plots revenge for his murdered father, or the Shakespearean Romantic tragedy Romeo & Juliet.

Other matched film choices were Anger Management and Billy Madison; Falling Down and The Game; and Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

One group were asked to make their viewing choice before selecting a snack, while the others chose between an apple and some chocolate after they had decided which film to watch.

Anger and revenge

The researchers found that 64% of apple-choosers went on to select a violent film, compared with only 55% of those who made their film choice before choosing an apple.

In contrast, those who went for the chocolate bar did not have their choice of film distorted to the same degree. 64% chose a violent film after choosing chocolate compared with 66% who decided on a film before choosing a chocolate snack.

In another study, participants who chose a healthy-option gift voucher for a supermarket rather than one for an enjoyable day out at a spa were more likely to take an interest in pictures of people with angry expressions.

Writing in The Journal of Consumer Research, authors David Gal and Wendy Liu say: "Given that most individuals are frequently engaged in self-regulation throughout any given day-whether it be resisting the urge to mock one’s boss, to yell at a screaming baby, to eat an extra slice of chocolate cake, to save instead of spend, or to play instead of work-our findings suggest that anger-related behaviour might be more prevalent than previously assumed or reported."

Dieting: Does it have to be like this?

So does this research have any important implications for people on diets? Does choosing healthy rather than unhealthy food mean we are destined to be angry and irritable?

Not necessarily, says dietician Sian Porter. "There's a lot of research which shows that people who lose weight and keep it off exercise something called flexible restraint," says Porter, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association. "It means that eight times out of 10 you will say no to the chocolate and choose the apple, but every now and then choose the chocolate because otherwise you will get frustrated," she tells us.

Porter says that in her clinical experience those who choose healthier foods are often in a better frame of mind. "Lots of them say their mood improves because they feel like they've got more energy and they feel re-energised because they say they're thinking about what they eat, they've lost weight and it's easier for them to move around".

Where people do go wrong, Porter says, is in the realm of 'crash diets' where dieters cut out whole food groups and avoid eating for large parts of the day. "We would recommend that if people were cutting back because they wanted to lose weight that they had small regular meals and snacks," she says.

source: webmd.boots