What Are The Most Eaten Snacks During a Netflix Binge?

There’s nothing better than sitting down and having a good old Netflix binge. A lot of us certainly have over the last few months. But what snacks do you usually have? Maybe you are a savoury person who loves being surrounded by takeaway food boxes while you catch up with your favourite show. Or, do you have more of a sweet tooth and love a good bar of chocolate?

Netflix is a major deal for many people. Five million UK households subscribe to Netflix with that rising to 167 million on a global scale. During lockdown, series such as Tiger King and Love Is Blind made major news because more people were watching than ever. 64 million households worldwide watched Tiger King in its first month of release!

Well, we wanted to know what most people are munching on when they are watching Netflix. So, we decided to conduct a survey of the most popular snack foods and asked people what they usually eat while watching different genres of TV shows.

When you’re laughing

In our research, we found that shows that make you laugh, such as sitcoms, comedy, cartoons and reality shows, people eat mostly similar snacks. Sweets came out on top for three of the four genres, showing that when people laugh, they love something sweet to go along with it.

Sitcoms came out as the biggest encourager of sweet-eating, as 52 per cent of people said that was their snack of choice. However, when we are watching someone go round an amazing house on Selling Sunset, chocolate came out on top for the favourite snack when watching reality TV. Are crying over our chocolate because we can’t afford a house like that, or is that just us?

When you’re crying

That moment when your favourite couple of Love Is Blind breaks up and you are devastated, what are you drowning your sorrows in? Well according to the people we surveyed, when we watch romance shows, we like to indulge in the romantic classic: chocolates. Romance fans are the biggest consumer of chocolate, with 56 per cent of people surveyed eating the snack while watching a beautiful love story. We imagine these chocolates to be in massive heart-shaped box, which is a totally different vibe to TV-fans’ favourite drama nibbles: a good old packet of crisps!

When you’re hiding behind a sofa

For those moments where we are terrified watching Stranger Things, people prefer to go with a traditional movie choice: over 50 per cent go for popcorn (or rather than eat it, they may just be throwing it at the TV). When watching an action series like Prison Break, people prefer to go with more savoury options, with the top three all being tied with the same number of votes: crisps, pizza, and hotdogs. When being intrigued by thrillers such as Money Heist, people go back to the standard first, second and third of chocolate, crisps, and sweets.

When you can’t stop watching

In moments where you can’t take your eyes off the screen, people have various snacks they enjoy. When watching sports programmes such as Cheer, you would expect people might go for healthier options. Wrong. The top three snacks in the sports section came out as crisps, pizza, and burgers, the unhealthiest genre we have seen in the survey. But viewers then tone it down when watching a documentary and sandwiches make their only appearance in the top three for any genre.

When people are trying to work out who the killer is, it seems people like a cuppa and a biscuit as biscuits come in second as the most consumed snack whilst watching a crime programme first being the classic bag of crisps.

Laugh more and eat less

When looking at other research conducted, comedies can make you eat less. Researchers at Cornell University found that people ate 22 per cent fewer grams of food when watching a comedy film than they did when watching an emotional film. This might be why in our study’s small snacks such as sweets mostly came out on top because people eat less during comedies – because they are laughing too much to chew on food! But, be careful of sad films, as they may make you fall victim to comfort eating and snack more!

Sadly for all you cheese lovers, for most of the categories, a cheese board came at the bottom of the rankings. However, it is interesting seeing the different snacks people consume while watching Netflix and if the different genres affect what you eat. So next time you are binging and you have a snack, take notice of what you are eating – it may have been influenced by what you are watching!

Sources

https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2020/07/24/25-most-popular-shows-netflix-2020/#386f16df44bd

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/the-movie-genre-that-makes-you-snack-more-112612767322.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANzhz0AyAgu1T3R9QKn6xVbtAqUv89JVTYOs62sjNZFe9SnQTZWzonRaUbEmOJHJiGqBpwyg-4RoY69tEgCWsPTWfSZAlAiP2wFW3pT-NRib6T5lRLJtW3cGi80x37HsgX29KfI7JWI_E7vksi3bVPrFTV_hPJMtTKobhxaLTw3a