Abstract
Does simply watching sports influence food consumption? Findings on the influence of exercise cues on food consumption are mixed: while some research suggests exposure to exercise cues increases food consumption, other suggests the opposite. We add to this literature by investigating the effect of advertisements portraying various levels of exercise difficulty on subsequent food consumption, providing an explanation for contradictions in prior work. Through two experiments we show that the effect of exercise cues on snack consumption varies according to perceived exercise difficulty. We demonstrate that viewing an advertisement portraying easy to perform, compared to harder to perform, sports leads to increased chocolate consumption for females. While it may seem intuitive to promote physical activity and healthy eating simultaneously, we show that the ease of the exercise portrayed may increase food consumption — ultimately backfiring efforts set in place to combat obesity.