New research* by psychologists at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York has found that cookery programmes that promote healthy home cooked food could be bad for your health.
In experiments conducted with 80 adults, researchers found that viewers watching cookery programmes were much more likely to eat unhealthy snacks compared to people watching nature shows.
I can see why people would be more likely to eat more when watching cooking programmes because they make you hungry! Even if I have already had my dinner I feel starving again when I watch chefs cook up delicious meals. The worst one for me was the Great British Bake Off, even if I was full when the episode started all I wanted by the end was cake and lots of it.
Watching TV and unhealthy lifestyles have been linked for a long time but I don’t think that we can start blaming cookery programmes for obesity. It seems pretty obvious to me that watching delicious food being cooked on your television would make you hungry and reach for a snack. Maybe the reason why people watching nature programmes ate less is because those shows include things that will definitely put you off your food!
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/9674512/Warning-TV-cookery-shows-are-bad-for-the-waistline.html