A new study revealed that people snack more while watching sad movies. Researchers from Cornell set up two groups to watch either Sweet Home Alabama (reportedly funny) and the 1970 tearjerker Love Story. The Love Story viewers ate 55 percent more popcorn.
A confirmation about a tendency to sad-snack is no revelation, but more popcorn? What a joyous, bouncy food. It is the food of spontaneity, captured in a funny yellow kernel of buttery sunshine. Anyone who has seen the first 15 minutes of Up or has blurred, teary ’90s memories that combine Stepmom, Sliding Doors, My Girl, and Simon Birch knows: Popcorn will not do.
Don’t you need something sweet to balance out the salty, weepy big tears streaming down your emoting face? Don’t you need something that crumbles in a soft, gentle fashion, in a way that assures you that everything will fall into place even if it’s sad and some crumbs don’t make it? Don’t you need an Oreo? Don’t you need 55 percent more Oreos? It’s the superior sad-movie snack.
