Supporting A Losing Team Can Be Bad For Your Health

So much for rooting for the underdogs. Supporting a losing team can be bad for your health.

Recent research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that watching your team circle the drain may lead you to self-medicate with saturated fats and sugars. Comparing two seasons of NFL games with food choices around the country, researchers discovered that on the Monday after a game, people in cities with a losing team consumed 16 percent more saturated fat than they typically would. Winning citizens, on the other hand, ate about 9 percent less saturated fat on the Monday following their team’s victory.

Narrow losses did even more damage to diets, as viewers noshed to cope with the stress of the game, according to the research.