Environmental cues affect how
much you eat
by:
Judy Foremen
08/18/08
Next time you sit down to dinner,
dim the lights - but not too much. Both bright light
and dim light may make you eat more. Watch the
background music, too. If it's too fast, you'll eat
fast, and therefore more; too slow and you'll keep
eating. And think small for plates - a portion that
looks skimpy on a dinner plate looks ample on a
salad plate.
The more that researchers study
obesity, the more they are finding that portion
control is key to successful weight loss. Often,
people think they're eating much less than really
are. And these perceptions can be influenced, often
outside our conscious awareness, by environmental
cues, including lights and music.
There is no question that portion
sizes have increased in recent years. Marion Nestle,
a professor of nutrition, food studies and public
health at New York University, and her colleague
Lisa Young, have found that most portion sizes are
now two or three times bigger than "serving" sizes,
as defined by the US Department of Agriculture and
the Food and Drug Administration.
That
wouldn't be so bad,
Nestle
said, except that research shows that "nobody has
any self-control. Everyone, everyone, when presented
with larger size portions will automatically eat
more calories." Even dietitians wildly underestimate
the number of calories in typical restaurant meals,
she said.
"Most people, unless they are
anorexic, really don't have any idea of how many
calories they are eating, and the food companies
promote this," said Tufts University psychologist
Robin Kanarek. "If you have a small bag of chips,
you think it's a serving. But it's actually two or
two and a half servings. Most people get fooled."
Whether it's because we've been
taught to finish our plates or get our money's worth
in restaurants, most of us eat everything that's put
in front of us, according to surveys by the American
Institute for Cancer Research. In 2000, the group
found that 67 percent of us finish our restaurant
entrees all or most of the time. In 2003, it found
that for 72 percent of us, the amount we eat is
determined by the amount we are used to eating or
the amount we are served "without any attention to
hunger, taste, or any other factor," said the
group's nutritionist, Karen Collins, in an e-mail.
Brian Wansink, who directs the
Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, has been a
leader in the study of the cues that make us eat too
much. In one famous study, he found that people
given huge buckets of popcorn at the movies ate an
average of 173 more calories than those given
smaller containers even though, in both conditions,
the popcorn tasted awful because it was five days
old.
In other studies, Wansink, who is
also executive director of the Center for Nutrition
Policy and Promotion at the US Department of
Agriculture, has rigged a "bottomless" soup bowl
that keeps refilling itself as people eat, prompting
people to eat 73 percent more soup. He has also
shown that variety on the plate makes people eat
more. When people were offered six different jelly
bean flavors in a scrambled, disorganized array
(lots of visual variety), they ate twice as many
jelly beans as when the jelly beans were in an
arrangement organized by color.
Wansink's research also
demonstrated the tricky effects of lighting and
music on eating.
"The big danger," said Wansink,
"is that we all think we are too smart to be
influenced by environmental cues.
"The good news is that it is very
easy to reverse these cues and to just as mindlessly
eat less." In fact, he said, most of us won't even
notice if we eat 20 percent more or fewer calories
than usual, though we will notice a change of 30
percent.
So, if restaurateurs and food
marketers can use environmental cues to get us to
eat (and buy) more, we can use the same psychology
to take back our waistlines.
At home, for instance, put your
dinner on a small plate and pay attention to the
"serving" size. A serving of meat, fish, or poultry
is about 3 ounces - or about half a can of tuna -
but most of us have become accustomed to portion
sizes of 8 ounces or more, according to a recent
issue of the Tufts University Health & Nutrition
Letter.
And serve food on individual
plates rather than passing a platter at the table so
as not to be tempted into second helpings.
At a restaurant, have two
appetizers instead of an appetizer and an entree.
Take home the leftovers for a second meal. Or split
a meal with someone else. Order two veggies instead
of a veggie and a starch.
Ask for salad dressing on the
side, ditto for mayonnaise for a sandwich. Don't
waste calories on drinks, except - if you want - for
a nice glass of wine. Don't let music and lighting
seduce you into eating more.
And watch out for the mind games
you can play on yourself: Since you'll probably
underestimate the calories even in a "healthy" main
course, don't fall into the trap of thinking you
deserve a rich dessert because you've been so good.
Judy Foreman’s column runs every other week. Past
columns are available on
www.myhealthsense.com.
Listen to her live
call-in webcast radio show every Wednesday night
from 8:30 to 9:30 EST on
http://www.healthtalk.com.
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