Although we are constantly subjected to a barrage of advertising urging us to eat all the time, we will be healthier if we eat only when we are hungry,  a new study finds.

This is because our bodies respond differently to food when we're hungry as opposed to when we're not, this new research from the Cornell Food & Brand Lab suggests.

Researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago created an experiment in which 45 undergraduate students were asked to rate their level of hunger and then to consumer a meal rich in carbohydrates.

To measure how the meal was impacting participants' health, participants' blood glucose levels were measured at regular intervals after they consumed the meal. Blood glucose levels tend to rise after a meal containing carbohydrates and it is generally healthier if blood glucose levels rise by a relatively small amount because elevated blood glucose is damaging to the body's cells.

The results show that individuals who were moderately hungry before the meal tended to have lower blood glucose levels after consuming the meal than individuals who were not particularly hungry before consuming the meal.

“This suggests it’s a lot healthier to eat when you’re hungry than when you’re not hungry,” says David Gal, the lead author of the study, which appears in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.