New Carnegie Mellon University experiments revealed that, when a solid gap existed between when people ordered their food and when they planned to eat it, they opted for significantly lower calorie meals. Interestingly, it wasn’t being hungry in the moment that made the “no willpower” difference, but seemed to be that when one orders meals/food in advance that one can better weigh the longer term costs/benefits.
Must-Reads from the Wellness World (Week of August 23, 2016)
The Secret Code to Unleashing the World’s Most Amazing Flavors – Wired, August 2016
Food can be a potent source of wellness. A famous chef presents what he calls his “unified theory of deliciousness.”
Companies Getting Aggressive with “Unplugging” Employees
With mounting research that the new always-on work culture is killing productivity, more companies worldwide are taking action to unplug workers. This can range from creating firm policies on work hours (and encouraging people to totally unplug outside of them) to automatically deleting emails for employees on vacation – even banning all internal work emails in favor of calls and face-to-face communication.
August Wellness Trends: Social Spaces in Hotels and Gyms, More Sugar Taxes
Malleret examines a couple of rising trends in the wellness space this month: 1) How both hotels and gyms are creating new “social spaces” where the separation between work, play and rest is getting blurred, and whether this trend threatens the very concept of the “stand-alone” gym. 2) Whether the uniquely structured new tax just passed in Philadelphia on sugary drinks means more such measures are coming in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Innovative “Wellness Village” Being Developed in Wales Spurred by GWI Roundtable
The GWI’s international roundtables are forums where experts – whether from medicine, science, policy, hospitality or spa – come together to drive more wellness in the world. The 2015 roundtable in Wales held with Swansea University seems to have done just that.
Learn Something, Wait a Few Hours, then Exercise to Build Memory
A new study from Radboud University-Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh explores how exercise can boost brain function. Participants first observed pictures, to try to remember their place on a screen, and then two-thirds did follow-up exercise: half of the group did interval training 35 minutes after the spatial/visual test and half did it four hours later. The interesting finding was that those who exercised four hours after the test recreated the picture locations most accurately, and MRIs showed their brain activity had a more consistent pattern of neural activity.
