Do cigarette addicts necessarily compensate by eating more? Not necessarily. According to a new American study, quitting smoking would have little effect on the attraction for food.
This is one of the fears of smokers wishing to quit smoking: compensate for their addiction by throwing themselves on food and, in fact, gaining weight.
However, this is far from being systematically the case, reveals a study from the University of Buffalo, in the United States, and published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. By analyzing smokers’ actual money expenditures on cigarettes, food and water while abstinence, the researchers found that the motivations for these three elements “do not interact much”. “The results suggest that abstinence from smoking does not affect motivation for food and water”, explains Stephen Tiffany, co-author of the work.
No added attraction for food
For the purposes of the study, the researchers recruited 50 participants, all smokers, half of whom had abstained from smoking for 12 hours, and to whom they gave $9 to spend as they wished, or to keep it. . Among the products they could afford were: a pack of their favorite brand of cigarettes, their favorite candy or a bottle of water.
They found that non-abstaining smokers spent more money on cigarettes than on food, and more money on food than on water. Abstinent smokers spent even more on cigarettes, but little on food or water.
Understand what causes relapses
“When people abstain from smoking, their cravings tend to increase, but they don’t become hypersensitive to food,” says Professor Tiffany.
“If you’re on a plane and you can’t smoke, you probably won’t spend more money than usual on snacks,” he adds.
While this work has not been completed, he said early results show how important cues are to smokers and how events that remind them of the urge to smoke drive them to drive and determine their choices. “People don’t relapse randomly. They relapse in the presence of opportunities that can be triggered by particular cues,” concludes the researcher. It therefore remains to determine what are the reasons that push former smokers to relapse.
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