Why sad movies are fattening.

• Position: BEHAVIOR - Brief article

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The next time you're deciding which movie to see, consider this: Sad movies may be more fattening than comedies. According to a recent study, test subjects watching Love Story--a weepy 1970 romance--ate an average of 125 grains of buttered, salted popcorn (the amount in a medium-size bag at the movies). That's 28 percent more than they ate during Sweet Home Alabama, a 2002 comedy about a fashion designer going home to the rural South. The popcorn experiment was described in a recent article in the Journal of Marketing about the connection between people's moods and the type and quantity of food they eat. Researchers found that people who are feeling unhappy eat larger amounts of foods that they consider...