The morning after the 2016 vote, Hillary Clinton supporters woke up in a state of shock and grief. The unthinkable had happened, and almost nobody saw it coming.
So they did what Americans do best: They ate. And ate. And ate.
Lose It, a calorie-counting app that helps users track their daily food intake, says there’s always a Tuesday to Wednesday drop-off of active users as dieters lose motivation they had earlier in the week. (Ever notice how the gym is always more crowded on Monday?) But something funny happened the Wednesday after Election Day: The drop-off rate was four times as much as usual.
“There was definitely a post-election slump,” said Charles Teague, chief executive officer of Lose It. The company doesn’t record its users’ political leanings, but it says 75.8 percent are female and 77 percent are aged from 18 to 44-demographics that swung to Clinton.
Meanwhile, orders for desserts such as cheesecake, pie, and ice cream were up 72 percent on Caviar, a meal-ordering app operating in 15 urban markets, including Boston, New York, Dallas, and Seattle. Clinton also carried cities with 50,000 residents or more with a strong margin, even in deep-red Texas.
Of course, none of this definitively proves that Democratic voters sat in bed and cried over their tiramisu. But if they did, they shouldn’t beat themselves up (assuming they don’t have a condition such as diabetes or high cholesterol).
“Wanting some comfort food for a day or two may not be a health crisis,” said Dr. Sharon Allison-Ottey, a physician, health educator, and author of “Is That Fried Chicken Wing Worth It?” “It becomes unhealthy when it’s prolonged.”
The good news is that it didn’t take long for dieters to return to their normal habits. “The start of the next week, things returned to normal,” Teague said. “On Monday, people said, ‘OK, I’m going to get back on this thing.’ ”
(c) 2016, Bloomberg ยท Deena Shanker
