I tend to do my grocery shopping very spur of the moment. Being one of those people who is constantly engaging in the vicious cycle of using spare time to figure out when I will again have more spare time to go out and do things that need to get done, like grocery shopping for instance, I tend to run most of my errands very spur of the moment. I’ll finish working a little earlier than I had planned, look at the clock and then go running to my partner saying “Hey look! I’m done working and now we must go run errands because who knows when we will have this time again!” And off we go to the store. Because of this, we often make a very grave mistake before heading out to the grocery store. We don’t eat beforehand.

You can tell when someone goes to the grocery store while they’re starving; their shopping cart is loaded up with things they would love to be eating right that moment and if they’re hungry enough, that means pretty much everything. It has always simply been known that you don’t go to the grocery store hungry, but now there’s some scientific evidence to back that theory up.

Researchers at the University College London recently conducted a study where they put participants on different diets that influenced their metabolism. They then gave the participants options of playing various lotteries, some riskier than others. The researchers found that study participants were more likely to choose riskier options when they were hungry than when they weren’t. As soon as the researchers fed the participants, they began making more conscious and money-saving decisions.

Simply put, eat before you head out to the grocery store. Being hungry and trying to do pretty much anything doesn’t work as well as it would if you were operating on a full stomach; when you’re hungry you are irritable and when your stomach is full, you are a lot more level-headed. You could end up saving quite a bit at the grocery store, or when running any other errands you have, just by heading out of the house right after you eat breakfast or lunch.