HHS HealthBeat (May 5, 2009)

Unintended consequences

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Does encouragement to exercise make people eat more?

A study indicates it can.

Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois compared people who saw posters encouraging exercise and posters with neutral messages. She also looked at a computer test in which people saw active words like "go" and neutral ones like "pair" flashed so fast that the words didn’t consciously register.

In both cases, people got a chance to snack afterward.

[Dolores Albarracin speaks] "The exercise messages increased eating, relative to the control messages."

Albarracin believes that general messages about burning calories might have unintended consequences. She considers this another reason to watch what you eat.

The study in the journal Obesity was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011