It’s high time someone proved that Harold and Kumar were onto something with that late-night White Castle run.
A recent study found that cannabis consumption actually does make people crave junk food — or at least, makes them buy items with high in fat and sugar.
A team of researchers looked at the effect of recreational marijuana laws on junk food sales and found a spike after legalization laws were introduced, according to Medical News Today.
The researchers examined purchasing data from grocery, convenience, drug and mass distribution stores in more than 2,000 counties across 48 states, and compared sales to before and after the introduction of legalization laws.
What they found proved that the munchies may indeed be a real phenomenon, especially when it comes to treats like ice cream and cookies.
After legalization, there was a 3.1 percent increase in people buying ice cream, a 4.1 percent increase in cookie purchases, and a 5.3 percent increase in chip purchases.
“(W)e find that legalizing recreational marijuana leads to an increase in sales of junk food,” the study concluded.
“These might seem like small numbers, but they’re statistically significant and economically significant as well,” said study co-author Michael Baggio, according to Medical News Today.
The study was published by Baggio and Alberto Chong in the journal Social Science Research Network.
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