One of the best advantages to working in an office atmosphere is the free food that is so often available. From birthday cakes to donuts and from cupcakes to brownies, there’s always something being brought in for everyone to share.
However, when you’re trying to lose weight, or even when you’re trying to keep off the weight you’ve already lost, those free office snacks can be devastating to your progress.
That said, according to the results of a recent study, keeping yourself safe from the dangers of free office snacks is actually just a matter of one simple trick. The research was published within the Appetite journal and what it revealed was that a simple rearrangement of the snack area of the break room or other place where shared food is kept, is all that is needed to give yourself the ability to step by the mini muffins and sit down with your spinach and strawberry salad (with poppy seed dressing).
The research was the result of a request that Google made to researchers at Yale University and Saint Joseph’s University, when it asked them to come up with a way to offer treats to eat without actually leading the Millennials that make up their workspaces to become obese in the process.
In order to come up with the answer Google wanted, the researcher examined the snacking behavior occurring at the New York office for the tech giant. The goal was to determine the relationship between the free snacks and drinks, and their location when it came to the rate at which they were consumed by the Google employees. What they discovered was that the closer the snacks were placed to the drinks, the more people were likely to take. This wasn’t just a matter of making it inconvenient for both a free snack and free beverage to be taken. Even a few feet of difference in their locations was enough to create a measurable difference.
The belief is that if a person heads to the break room with the intention of grabbing something to drink such as a cup of coffee or even a glass of water, it can feel easy and natural to just grab a bite while he or she is there. However, if the snack is placed just out of reach from the reason the person is there in the first place, it’s easier to pass it by.
