Stale popcorn? No problem

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Nov 17th 2005 @ 6:04PM

It’s been widely recognized for some time that people will generally eat more if given the opportunity. A recent study from researchers at Cornell University goes a step further and shows that many people, even when given a larger portion of undesirable food, will still eat more. Researchers gave over 150 moviegoers medium and large buckets of popcorn—some of it fresh, some of it two weeks old. Those with the bigger buckets of stale popcorn ate 34 percent more than those with the smaller buckets. The percentage of fresh popcorn eaten was even larger. Brian Wansink, economics and marketing professor and head of the Cornell study says that knowledge of portion control could be used to get people to eat greater quantities of nutritious food as well. Wansink has worked on several studies involving portion control and consumer perceptions. Science Daily has more.

Filed Under: Science, Ingredients
Tags: grains

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-17-2005 @6:32PM Christopher Campbell said... When I working at a cinema in high school, the popcorn was only popped in a giant room every two weeks, so the customers were always getting two-week old (or more) popcorn. Since then they've gone to popping fresh at least on the weekends, but I'm such a corn junky, I will eat all of whatever popcorn size or quality I'm given.
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11-17-2005 @11:32PM David T said... I don't know if popcorn was a good food for this test- I use to have a room mate that liked popcorn BETTER if it was stale. He would pop a bag and then let it sit on the counter for a few days before he would eat it.

Personally I think he's wrong, but maybe others agree with him.
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11-18-2005 @2:19AM Dominic Lague said... "Those with the bigger buckets of stale popcorn ate 34 percent more than those with the larger buckets."

Is that to say that both sizes of bucket were equally big, or was something else intended?
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11-18-2005 @3:33AM Kelley Ritchey said... Christopher in comment number one made an interesting comment-that cinema only popped corn every two weeks. I'm wondering how sensitive we are to day-old or week-old popcorn.

What happens to popcorn after a day or two? Does it "go bad" or is it pretty much unchanged? I bet most people can't tell the difference!

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11-18-2005 @12:21PM Sir Not Appearing in this Blog said... I've worked in several theatres and I can state unequivocally that popcorn did NOT get reused in any of them. It was popped fresh daily, several times a day. I can't even imagine how much room two weeks' worth of popcorn would take up, but I doubt there'd be a room in the theatre large enough for all of it.

As for liking it stale, I'll cop to that. I prefer it hot and fresh with some butter (the real stuff, thanks) and lots of salt. But after it goes stale it gets chewy and with the butter and salt it's really quite delicious. My absolute favourite bits are the ones at the bottom of the tub which have been soaking in the butter...greasy goodness! 8^)
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