Feeling thankful? Feel like a Snickers bar?

According to Ann Schlosser, a professor of marketing at the University of Washington, feeling grateful for the helpful actions of others increases one's preference for and consumption of sweets.

In fact, the more we feel connected with others the more inclined we are to indulge in sugary goodies, writes Schlosser in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Whereas salty, sour and bitter tend to describe negative emotions, sweet is almost universally associated with positive feelings, such as empathy, generosity and kindness. Schlosser and colleagues looked to see whether the connection goes deeper, designing a series of experiments that assessed whether participants' feelings of gratitude after an act of kindness translated into increased feelings for, oh, a bowl of ice cream and some Oreo cookies.

"Because gratitude involves acknowledging benefits received from the kind — or metaphorically sweet — actions of another, individuals may infer that they must be deserving of sweetness," Schlosser said. "As a result, they prefer foods with a congruent sweet taste."

This is not great news with the holiday season looming — a time of great warmth, well-being and abundant pumpkin pie.

Body of Knowledge

The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.

Get Me That, Stat!

The country with the highest percentage of daily smokers is Austria (36.3 percent), followed by Greece (35 percent), Hungary (33.8 percent), Luxembourg (33 percent) and Turkey (32.1 percent), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Life in Big Macs

One hour of sitting in a Jacuzzi burns 68 calories (based on a 150-pound person), or the equivalent of 0.1 Big Mac.

Phobia of the Week

Cremnophobia: fear of precipices.

Never Say Diet

The Major League Eating record for salmon chowder is 312 fluid ounces (almost 2.5 gallons or 23.4 pounds) in six minutes, held by Bob Shoudt. Afterward, Shoudt said he felt he cod do better.

Best Medicine

Patient: "Doctor, I swallowed a bone!"

Doctor: "Are you choking?"

Patient: "No, I really did."

Observation

"We don't get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we're getting fat." — American writer Gary Taubes ("Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It")

Medical History

This week in 1961, Daniel Nathan and David Spain published the first statistical evidence linking heavy smoking with heart disease. Studying 3,000 men, they found smokers of more than 40 cigarettes daily and younger than 51 had a risk of coronary heart disease almost twice that of nonsmokers. More than half of the heavy smokers suffered heart attacks during the study. But the doctors declined to conclude their work was proof that heavy smoking causes heart problems. The research earned only a four-sentence article on Page 3 of The New York Times.

Curtain Calls

In 1977, Formula One race car driver Tom Pryce was killed at the South African Grand Prix when he was struck in the head by a track marshal's fire extinguisher. Track marshal Frederick Jansen van Vuuren was running across the racetrack to douse flames from a burning car (one of Pryce's teammates), when Pryce's speeding vehicle fatally struck him, and the extinguisher was sent flying.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.