Eating junk can lead to exercise as atonement

BAD food can be good for your long-term health because eating junk makes people more likely to go for a run, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide found young women were more likely to hit the gym if they had eaten food they thought was bad for them.

Health experts gave 100 undergraduate women chocolate and chips or almonds and apricots to eat, and then gave them a choice of either running on a treadmill or playing on an iPad.

Three-quarters of those who ate the chips and chocolate chose to go for a run, compared to just over half of those who had the nuts and fruit. The healthy and unhealthy snacks had the same amount of calories, sugar and carbohydrates, although the women surveyed perceived the chocolate and chips as much more unhealthy.

Lead author Jasmine Petersen from the SHAPE Research Centre said people appear to think that “an unhealthy behaviour can be compensated by subsequent engagement in a healthy behaviour”.

But there’s little link between what people eat and how long they exercised after.

“Simply engaging in a compensatory behaviour may be sufficient to alleviate any guilt experienced from engaging in an unhealthy behaviour, as opposed to attempting to negate the effects of that unhealthy behaviour,” Ms Petersen said in Appetite journal.

She said it was hard for people to gauge how much effort and energy expenditure is required to compensate for the snack intake. “While individuals believe it may be possible to balance energy intake and expenditure via compensation, the evidence suggests that the energy balance equation is more complex.”

It can take longer to work off unhealthy food, she said.