Healthy eating through music? Naturopathy Naturopathy Specialist Portal
Music can affect the eating habits
The personal eating habits has a significant influence on body weight. Anyone who wants to lose weight, not only physically, but also eat less. Can help music. A new study from Denmark suggests.
Recent research has shown that the eating behavior is influenced not only by psychological or physiological factors, but also by external factors, which determine the environment in which one eats (for example, lighting, color, or temperature). Also music can affect how quickly and how much we eat.
Eating speed to reduce
In the morning in the car on the way to work, at noon between two appointments at the Desk and in the evening in front of the television – for many people, eating has become a secondary thing. Anyone who enjoys his meals, but slowly and deliberately, noted better, when the saturation occurs. As the Federal centre for nutrition (BZfE) explains in a recent communication, is reduced in this way, the intake of calories, and the weight is easier to control.
According to a recent study by the Danish University of Aarhus background can reduce music at meals, the eating speed and thus contributing to a healthier eating habits. Particularly significantly, the effect was, therefore, with a slow, Legato piece. Legato (Italian=bound) will be played the consecutive tones of a voice, without interruption, explains the BZfE.
The results of the researchers from Denmark published in the journal “Appetite”.
Duration of food intake
In the experiments, nearly 300 participants and volunteers took part in total. The Participants had the task to rate the taste of a certain type of Chocolate, in an Online questionnaire. The women and men was not aware that it was, in fact, the duration of the tasting.
While eating they heard through headphones, the same music in different versions: a slow piano piece with 45 strokes, and a quick shooting with 180 beats per Minute. The successive tones were connected, according to the BZfE, either with each other more or less (legato) or through gaps separated (staccato). In the case of the Participants in the control group, no music was recorded.
When the subject heard the inside and the subjects of music, ate the chocolate piece to 30 percent more slowly than in silence. Particularly high is the duration of the food intake was, according to the researchers at the long Legato seeds. The difference was compared to a rapid Staccato-music if about ten percent.
Further studies should follow
Listen to music, and eating are complex phenomena that are influenced by numerous factors, the researchers to bear in mind. Presumably, the rhythm of chewing adapts according to the experts, the beat of the music. Therefore, fast music could be used in addition to other actions, against the lack of appetite in the elderly – in nursing homes–.
If a slow background music can contribute to a lower amount of Food and thus calorie intake, but remains open.
The data suggest that further studies should follow in real life situations, with full meals, such as lunch in the canteen. Then there are also other factors such as the size of the portion can be included. (ad)