Want to curb mindless snacking? Eat with your ‘non-dominant hand’

If you want to curb your mindless snacking while watching TV or at the movies, simply eat with your non-dominant hand, researchers say.

Reaching for your snack by changing the hand you eat with, helps you snack less, the report said.

“When we’ve repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and makes us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present,” the New York Daily news quoted study researcher David Neal, a psychology professor at University of Southern California, as saying in a statement.

In one experiment, scientists handed out popcorn to 98 moviegoers. Some participants received a bucket of fresh popcorn; others received “cold, wet, spongy, week-old” popcorn.

The researchers found that those who said they typically ate popcorn at the movies consumed about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale.

In a separate experiment, snackers who ate with their non-dominant hand consumed less popcorn than those who ate with their dominant hand.

The study has been published in the current issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.