Eating While Standing May Up Stress and Mute Taste Buds

Standing and eating for just a few minutes can mute your taste buds and overall consumption volume. Standing position causes great physical stress, which in turn makes the heart pump more blood. Therefore, eating while sitting can reduce stress and let you enjoy your meal.

Spending more time standing up and eating can cause physical stress and mute your taste buds. You're posture while eating matters. Therefore, sitting while eating improves your taste and reduces stress, says a new study.

The study, //published in the Journal of Consumer Research finds posture impacts taste perception, with food tasting better when you are sitting down.

‘Standing and eating for just a few minutes can mute your taste buds and overall consumption volume. Standing position causes great physical stress, which in turn makes the heart pump more blood. Therefore, eating while sitting can make you enjoy your meal and reduce stress.’

The researchers looked specifically at how the vestibular sense, which is responsible for balance, posture and spatial orientation, interacts with the gustatory sensory system, which impacts taste and flavor.

"This finding suggests that parents might be able to make unpleasant-tasting, healthy foods seem more palatable to reluctant children by having them eat standing up (vs. sitting down). In a similar vein, it might be beneficial to maintain a standing posture when consuming pharmaceutical products that have unpleasant tastes," said study lead author Dipayan Biswas, Professor at the University of South Florida in the US.

The research team found that the force of gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body, causing the heart to work harder to pump blood back up to the top of the body, accelerating heart rate.

Stress Relief by 'Comfort Foods' may Vary Between Sexes
Both men and women eat tasty foods as a strategy to reduce stress, and women may be more prone to this 'comfort food' style of eating.

This activates the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and leads to increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol.

This chain reaction reduces sensory sensitivity, which impacts food and beverage taste evaluation, food temperature perception and overall consumption volume.

Effect of Food on Stress-Related Mood and Eating Behavior
A study found that the type of meal is not important when considering its influence on changes in mood and eating behavior.

When people experience discomfort, foods that normally taste good do not appear as pleasant to the palate, said the study.

The research team confirmed their hypothesis by having 350 participants rate the tastiness of a pita chip. Those who were standing gave it a less favorable rating than those who were sitting in a padded chair.

Standing for 6 Hours can Help You Lose Weight
Sedentary workers can cut their sitting time to half, as it can help them burn more calories than sitting and also aids in weight loss.

They expanded the study by inducing additional stress and asked participants to try fruit snacks while carrying a shopping bag. Both sitting and standing participants reported the additional weight made the food item taste even worse.

Source-IANS