Chips make you chipper: Official

Science...

...at it's finest...

>Half were then given chips, a

What about the other half? were they given anything to balance the research?

I can imagine not being too cheerful when, having watched a film about Hiroshima you then see half your fellow watchers being led out of the area and given food (even if it's chips) while you are left to starve.

Equally I can see that as one of the feedees it might cheer you up a bit to be given food (even if it's only chips) rather than being one of the chip-less people still locked in the viewing cage.

Sounds like fair research to me.

ttfn

Half were give chips

But what happened to the other half, who were the control group? Did they get anything to eat? Tofu (would introduce mild disphoria, to say the least)? Chocolate? Or did they just see the first half stuffing their faces?

and where's the control group

who were given gruel or sprouts or something else - which would evaluate whether it was the chips been given that lead to an improvement in mood or simply the fact they were given something?

Chips vs No food

Although there's no information given I would expect they did the studies one by one, given this is psychology they probably did five people in each group and asked them to arbitrarily choose numbers from to describe their moods. The fact that people choose higher numbers after eating chips would then be taken as proof they are in better moods rather than feeling gluttonous and wanting everything bigger including their numbers.

Up your...

Any reasonably pleasant food would be comforting. But give me a plateful of salad and I'd tell you where you can stick your cucumber. (Just don't expect me to eat it afterwards).

Piece of cake

Excellent science indeed. Presumably this provides considerable evidence to justify the saying "fat and happy", which had previously baffled me somewhat as all the fat uns around here are miserable as fook.

Accuracy....

Aside from the fact that they don't mention the control group (as others have commented), there is the problem of what "chips" means. Having never heard of this "Aston" place, I thought the prof was saying "crisps" in a funny accent.....

So, the conclusion is...

... that comfort food brings comfort? That a hot, savoury treat is a treat? That being fed is nurturing?

Can I get a science grant to prove that the sun rising in the morning makes the day seem brighter to us? Or to find out if getting a bonus makes people feel valued? Or that getting grant money for specious studies makes us feel bloody clever?

Water Pipes Freeze in Winter

Reminds me of the study years back which found that water pipes are more likely to freeze during winter than during summer.

Stating the bleedin' obvious

> "Quite what gives chips this magical power is uncertain. Green offered: “There are a number of possible nutritional and psychological mechanisms which could explain the mood changes after eating chips. It may be down to the biological effects of nutritional components on brain chemistry, or simply a pleasurable oro-stimulatory sensation, triggered by the way chips taste.”"

I was musing over this, and thinking that the improvement in mood may be due to serotonin or tryptophan or blight or smeg or whatever it is that potatoes are made of, but then it came to me: "a pleasurable oro-stimulatory sensation, triggered by the way chips taste." And in those exact words, no less. Yes, you read it here first, apparently: people feel happier when they eat something tasty. As opposed to some execrable rubbish like salad.

Of course chips were better in the olden days, when they were cooked in dripping and served in newspaper and you'd just done a 26 hour shift down pit etc.

what kind of chips?

I'm quite fond of plantain chips, apple chips and even jack fruit chips just to name a few. Now then, just be clear, are we talking of chips, fries or crisps and on which side of the Atlantic? Ah, forget it and pass the bacon!

@Ammaross Danan et al.

In Birmingham (and the rest of the UK) a chip is a piece of potato about half an inch by half an inch by the length of the potato, deep fried until gorgeous.

What lesser gastronomic nations call a potato chip we call a crisp.

A vaguely chip based product which is a few mm by a few mm by a couple of inches (like we get in McDonalds) is a french fry.

Any full size chip-like product made from something other than a potato always has the vegetable specified - sweet potato chip, parsnip-chip etc. Assuming you would find anyone perverted enough to do that sort of thing that is.

A chip designed to go in the oven is either an oven chip or just plain wrong, depending on your viewpoint.

I hope that clears things up a little.