Mindfulness: A Long-Term Solution for Mindless Eating by College Students

The authors draw from psychology, neuroscience, and consumer behavior to explain how mindfulness as a trait and practice affects people's cognitive processing and behavior. An exploratory study examines how mindfulness practices could be applied to the marketing and public policy issue of mindless eating habits of college students. The authors present a mindfulness scale adapted from clinical psychology and use it to measure levels of students' mindfulness traits and their relationship both to mindless eating habits and to self-reported levels of stress. They repeat the same study with a group of students who had been practicing mindfulness. The findings show that mindfulness is negatively related to overeating and skipping meals. Furthermore, incidence of engaging in poor eating habits is lower for students who practice mindfulness. The authors outline a direction for future scholarship that incorporates mindfulness to address marketing and public policy issues in the domain of eating behaviors.