TV programming that shows alcohol fuels consumption.
If you have found recently that your waistline has shown an appreciable increase in girth, spending a little less time on the couch might be a solution. But researchers in the Netherlands claim to have found the nucleus of all the problems arising out of being a couch potato.
They say watching fictional characters drink alcohol, for example on television, may trigger an immediate desire to do the same. And, needless to say, the theory applies to the assortment that comes with the beer — nuts, potato chips...
The research, which found enough volunteers among Dutch men aged 18 to 29, involved being supplied with free nuts, potato chips and a refrigerator stocked with beer, wine and soda to watch two movies — American Pie 2 and 40 Days and 40 Nights. The two movies were chosen because they featured characters who downed copious quantities of liquor on screen and offered contrasting themes — the former is a raunchy teen movie while the latter is a romantic comedy.
The researchers were funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the National Foundation for Alcohol Prevention. They found the students downed an average of one and a half more drinks during an hour-long excerpt from American Pie 2 that also featured two commercial breaks featuring alcohol than during 40 Days and 40 Nights, which did not feature the alcohol ads. For the record, the actors in the first movie drank liquor 18 times and the movie showed alcohol another 23 times, while the latter movie portrayed the beverages 15 times and showed characters drinking three times. The results have been published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.
There have been many studies to link drinking behaviour and media portrayal of alcohol, but the Dutch team claims theirs is the first controlled study. “While watching an ad for a particular brand of beer, you are not only more prone to buy that brand next time you are in the supermarket, but also you might go immediately to the fridge to take a beer,” says Rutger Engels, a developmental psychopathology professor at Radboud University, Nijmegen. It is hoped the results will influence a reduction in the availability of alcohol in certain settings, such as a theatre showing movies and commercials, and thus will reduce consumption.