Don’t we all know what it feels like to be ‘hangry’?: That vicious combination of hungry and angry in which everything becomes much more difficult? Food is our fuel that allows us to concentrate, work out, stay nourished and even to socialise. Apart from helping us with our jobs, gyms and friends, research now suggests that food can help our marriages. A recent study in the National Academy of Sciences invites a whole new meaning to nourishing your marital relationship…
Dr Bushman of Ohio State University looked at glucose levels in married couples and their affection towards each other. He used 107 couples in 12 year long marriages and asked them to rate their spousal relationship by completing two tasks, whilst measuring their blood sugar levels every morning and night for three weeks.
The first task that participants had to complete every evening was to stick pins in a doll that they were told represented their spouse. The second task was performed once at the end of the experiment, and involved playing a game against their spouses (in reality, they were playing against the machine). They were told that if they won this game, they would be prized with being able to torment their partner with horrible sounds of varying pitches and durations, such as fingernails on chalkboards or a shrill alarm.
The results from the tasks showed that blood sugar does affect marital annoyance. Most couples were not particularly punitive towards each other in the ‘pins in doll’ task, but over the course of the three-week study, there was a marked correlation between those that had low blood sugar and those that chose louder and longer ‘punishment’ sounds to subject their partner to.
So swallow the snide comments and plate up. Perhaps the well-known saying that ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ is true for women too!