You\u2019ve probably seen movies about stoners smoking pot and\nthen loading up on junk food. But is it accurate? Well, according to new\nresearch, legalizing weed has created a spike in junk food sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier research linking smoking pot to junk food sales\ncould have easily been flawed because it relied primarily on self-reported food\nintake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But with states legalizing recreational marijuana in\ndifferent years, it allowed researchers to look at retail data from over 2,000\ncounties across the country between the years of 2006 and 2016. They looked at\nthe sales of chips, cookies and ice cream at drug, convenience, grocery and\nmass distribution stores before and after recreational marijuana was legalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure enough, after recreational marijuana was legalized, there was an increase in the sale of junk food. Specifically, there was a 5.3% increase in chip purchases, a 4.1% increase in cookie purchases and a 3.1% increase in ice cream purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the months following the legalization, the sales of chips and ice cream went down by cookie purchases stayed the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese might seem like small numbers,\u201d says one of the lead\nresearchers, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut\nMichele Baggio, \u201cbut they\u2019re statistically significant and economically\nsignificant as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear, Baggio says she is not saying she is for or\nagainst legalization of marijuana. This is only research. \u201cI\u2019m just interested\nin whether there are unintended consequences to the policy,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The authors of the study say they decided to research the\nlink between marijuana and junk food because \u201cit is rather important to\nunderstand not only the direct impact of cannabis use but also any unintended\nbehavioral spillover effects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obesity is already an epidemic in the United States, but\nknowing how even small changes in our eating habits can affect public health\nare important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The results of the research were published in the journal Social Science Research Network.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You\u2019ve probably seen movies about stoners smoking pot and then loading up on junk food. But is it accurate? Well, according to new research, legalizing weed has created a spike in junk food sales. The data behind \u201cthe munchies\u201d Earlier research linking smoking pot to junk food sales could have easily been flawed because it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[723,983,968,732,969,870,970],"class_list":["post-13406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-diet","tag-junk-food","tag-marijuana","tag-nutrition","tag-pot","tag-smoking","tag-weed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}