The results from a recent research performed by Cornell Food and Brand Lab will most likely make you want to run immediately to your kitchen and clean it thoroughly.
The research found that having a cluttered and messy kitchen can actually cause you to eat more and gain weight! And vice versa – people with nice clean and de-cluttered kitchens eat less.
Although the correlation between the condition of your kitchen and your weight doesn’t seem that obvious, this research found that there could be one.
It included the study of 98 ladies who were divided into two equal groups, each group was then asked to wait either in a nice and clean kitchen or a messy cluttered kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes. Both kitchens had bowls with snacks, including cookies, crackers and carrots.
The research team found that the group of women in the messy kitchen ate twice as many cookies than the ladies in the neat kitchen and the former ate more food as a whole as compared to the latter.
The research team also asked some of the study subjects to write down cases in which they felt they were totally out of control and others to give examples about times when they have felt fully in control. After giving their answers the ladies were sent to the kitchens, and the study found that women who were asked to write about situations when they felt completely out of control ate a hundred more calories as compared to the others who were asked to share their memories of an event in which they have felt fully in control.
This finding by the research team confirms what we already know – that stress leads to stress-eating which can cause overeating and weight gain too.
In general, the explanation, given by the research team and several nutrition experts about the relation between overeating and cluttered and messy kitchens is that cluttering creates a feeling of overwhelming stress, and the brain switched to ‘eating mode” in order to take away the mind off the stress. So, overall cluttered and chaotic kitchens and other rooms will cause us extra stress, which is the last thing we need when we get home from work or school.
The positive aspect of this research is that now we can all be motivated to start cleaning our kitchens, and performing that decluttering which we have planned to do for a long time but never actually got to it.
Naturally, if you prefer to choose an even easier and more efficient way to do that is to contact the professional cleaners of your choice, who will do all the scrubbing and cleaning for you.
Just take a minute and think about the positive effect a thorough kitchen cleaning and decluttering will have on your emotional well being and on your body figure and weight as well!
