Why is it when we watch a movie, even though we're not particularly hungry, we feel the need to eat?

Great Question! I think we’ve been conditioned like this; I was certianly brought up with the notion that watching and TV and eating food go together like chocolate and tea. However, eating food directs blood flow away from the brain and watching TV is not a very active brain ‘activity’ as far as I’m aware… maybe it’s part of a mass conspiracy to turn us all into zombies? Perhaps?

@nebule Great Answer back atcha. It is slightly strange yet at the same time perfectly natural. Zombies!?! All of us?? Help!!!!

For me,it would be boredom.Once I run out of popcorn,I start to get disruptive.or fall asleep
;)

Like @nebule, we’ve been conditioned or even brain-washed into eating food at the theater. It’s so they can charge $10 for a small popcorn.

@lucillelucillelucille Disruptive? Hmm, wonders how this manifests itself. I’m guessing in a warped but funny kind of way? :¬)

@ucme—snickers—;)

Because we are bored because when we are watching a movie, our minds aren’t usually as active as when reading or something, and we need something else to do while doing another mindless activity I eat chips with movies :P

Because it’s part of the ‘movie thing’, for me.

Oh yeah! Eating snacks (especially popcorn, for me) just seem to make the movie more enjoyable.

I don’t know about you, but I never buy the $15 soda at the movie theater. I usually have my wife sneak in a bottle of water and a snack in her purse and call it good.

@erichw1504 Oh the wife smuggles in all sorts of goodies. She’s the brave one, I just stand there with the kids looking all sheepish. The prices are through the roof in there.

@ucme Exactly, I already shoveled out $20 for the tickets.

This is part due to colors that are used in theaters / on TV ad’s / in print. I don’t have a link, but studies have been done that show certain colors make you hungry or thirsty.

@erichw1504 See we get a family ticket, discounts galore. Not bad really, but the snacks & drinks prices are way high.
@mrlaconic Now that is interesting. Has to be some reasoning behind it, even if it’s subliminal.

GQ! I’ve always wondered about that myself. Is it some kind of marketing through the generations (think of those ads in cinemas that go back forever) that has just been accepted and reinforced and has now become “part of the experience”? and by the by, if you visit a checkout in my local supermarket, evenings and weekends lots of customers pop in for their drinks and snacks before heading to the cinema just two doors away, (as do I on the very rare visit I manage these days). Cinema munchies are just plain robbery these days. I found the theory of sublimal advertising, via colours, really interesting.
huggles xx

I’m loving the “contraband” unity regarding the snacks. Power to the people! XD

This is why I only go to the theaters once or twice a year. I’d rather wait a few months for the movie to come out on DVD and get it through Netflix. Which costs just over a dollar per movie when getting the two-at-a-time deal.

@ucme Haha, I’m guilty of it too. I carry a bigger purse, and have bottled drinks and candy stashed in it. I do actually shell out the money for the popcorn, because hey I gotta have the popcorn, totally drowned in butter…

And I guess we eat while watching movies out of habit. When I was a kid, it was a really big deal to rent a movie for Saturday night and make popcorn. I still want my popcorn, a soda and some M&Ms or Reeses Pieces when I go to the movie theater.

Who isn’t hungry during a two hour movie?? Plus, we’ve been conditioned to the scent of buttered popcorn when viewing one. (;

I just had Coconut M&M’s watching the end of a long movie I feel asleep on last night. lol