Post by Jai D on Jan 14, 2010 13:00:43 GMT -5
The psychology of eating
www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/3218619/The-psychology-of-eating
It takes around 20 minutes for the body and brain to recognise we are full, but most meals in western society are eaten so quickly, they are finished before the 20 minutes is up. Clearly, it isn't satiation of hunger which tells us to stop eating.
Rather than consider whether we're feeling full after each mouthful, we're more likely to trust our eyes and stop eating by judging what's left on our plate.
Our eyes also mislead us. We can't "see" kilojoules in a meal and we're not good at estimating the size of a meal on sight. Our eyes aren't good judges of food intake and worse, they're easily tempted.
Remember the "see food diet"? If we see food we think about it more. Our bodies then prepare for eating by increasing salivation and hormone production to process food, our hunger increases and consequently, we eat more.
And we don't remember exactly what we've already eaten. Did we have three or four biscuits with our coffee this afternoon? Normal- weight adults will underestimate their food intake by 20% while obese people underestimate their intake by 30-40%.
Our environment can also make us fat. It's Murphy's law that the day you decide to adopt a healthier eating pattern, your workmate shouts lunch; or you're unexpectedly given chocolates; or you're served a rather large expensive restaurant dinner you feel obliged to finish. Our environment can be a minefield when it comes to healthy eating intentions. Here's what research tells us:
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* Big packages, servings, and super-sized meals subconsciously suggest big portions are normal.
* Bigger plates, glasses and serving spoons hold more, so we serve and eat more.
* Our brains focus on height rather than width. This is known as the horizontal- vertical illusion. We drink more from short, wide tumblers compared to tall, slender glasses.
* TV is a "triple eating threat", says Wansink. It encourages snacking, we don't concentrate on how much we eat, and we eat too long.
* We can't refuse supermarket offers like "buy two, get one free" and typically buy 30-100% more. And we eat more when it's stockpiled in our cupboards.
* Convenience costs us. Quick, easy access to food means there is no time to consider how hungry we really are.
* Drinks before dinner reduce our inhibitions, so we eat more than intended when enjoying a tipple.
* More food variety encourages overeating as we're biologically programmed to seek food diversity. Having abundant food supplies (for example, in restaurants, pantries and shops) spells trouble.
* Cooler temperatures, dimmed lighting and soft music all encourage overeating.
* "Healthy" restaurant perception can lull us into a false sense of security. Restaurants and fast food chains with healthy-sounding products and advertising create a "health halo" - we overeat at these outlets, thinking we can do no wrong.
* "Healthy" product perception such as fat- free labels and positive health claims may be amplified by consumers, according to Wansink. Consumers eat up to 50% more of low-fat products.
Here are some easy ways to change your habits:
* Think about whether you are really hungry.
Physical hunger appears slowly after a meal, your stomach rumbles, and the sensation disappears after eating. Emotional hunger involves cravings and often isn't satisfied by eating.
* Consciously decide how much to eat before you start your meal.
* Cut your portions, but not too much. Reducing the size of your meal by a fifth will mean you eat less, but you won't notice nor feel deprived.
* Eyeball your food. Whatever the meal, put all the food you plan to eat on your plate instead of picking from serving dishes on the table. Then you can see and understand the quantities.
* Be the last person to start eating at meals, and put your knife and fork down between bites.
* Save empty treat wrappers as a reminder of how many treats you have eaten over the day/week.
* Create food trade-offs or food policies, suggests Wansink. For example, tell yourself, "I can have dessert only if I take a 30-minute walk first." Or, "I can only eat snacks away from my work desk" (this gives you time to reconsider your desire).
* Eat more slowly. Some suggestions are to eat using utensils in your non-dominant hand, chew your food 30-50 times each mouthful, make a healthy-sized plate of food last 20 minutes, and pace yourself with the slowest eater at the table.
* Think laterally. For example, order an entree and side salad instead of an over- sized main when dining out.
Use smaller plates and bowls - they discourage overeating.
* Keep treat and snack foods out of sight and out of mind. Seal in non-transparent containers and place on top shelves of the pantry. Wrap tempting leftovers in tinfoil and store at the back of the fridge.
* Place healthy, low-energy foods at the front of the pantry and fridge.
* Use smaller serving spoons so you'll take smaller servings.
* Make snacking inconvenient. Put snack and treat foods somewhere you have to get up and walk to - or better still, don't have them in the house, so if you really want a treat, you have to go out to get it.
* Avoid temptation. Don't drive past the takeaway shop, don't walk through the kitchen, turn off the TV to avoid food adverts - develop a plan to avoid your weaknesses.
* Make eating seconds inconvenient. Leave serving dishes in the kitchen - the walk from the table deters overeating.
* Eat at the dinner table, not in front of the TV, computer or while reading
* For more great ideas, recipes and articles, see the latest issue of Healthy Food Guide magazine, only $5.50 in supermarkets and bookstores nationwide. nwww.healthyfood.co.nz
What the research says
See food, eat it!
The phrase "bottomless bowl" gained new meaning when Brian Wansink and his research team designed self-refilling soup bowls. Fifty-four adults were recruited to eat as much free soup as they desired for lunch and fill out a questionnaire - at least that's what they thought.
In reality, half the participants were given bowls that secretly self-refilled as soup was pumped up from underneath their table into the bowl as they ate. The other half were given bowls that were openly refilled by waiters.
Those with self-refilling bowls thought they had eaten the same quantity as the others, when they had eaten a whopping 73% more. Visual cues affected intake. As long as there was soup in the bowl, they kept eating, unaware of how much they were truly consuming.
Our environment makes us eat more
Distractions during mealtime caused women participating in a French study to eat significantly more than normal. The women were invited to eat lunch in four different laboratory situations in four successive weeks: alone without instruction; alone with instruction on how to eat; alone while listening to a recorded detective story; and at a lunch with all the women together.
The women ate between 200-400kJ more energy during the meal they consumed while listening to the recorded detective story. The researchers believe listening to a story presented sufficient distraction to alter normal eating habits.
The "healthy halo" effect
If a food product says "low-fat", do you eat more? Probably. In a US study, adults were directed to one of two bowls of unusually coloured M&Ms (gold, teal, purple and white) and invited to help themselves.
The bowls were labelled either "New colours of regular M&Ms" or "New low-fat M&Ms". On average, people ate 28% more of the supposedly low-fat variety. In another study, researchers asked participants to estimate suitable serving sizes for M&Ms and muesli.
Half the participants were told these were low-fat versions of the food, the others were told they were regular versions. When people saw a food labelled "low-fat", they estimated an appropriate serving size to be 25% bigger. These studies found we often assume the energy (kilojoule) content of a food is much less in foods labelled "low-fat" than it really is.
Menu descriptions affect our choices
Research by Wansink and his colleagues has been taken on board by the food and beverage industry in the US. He provides the example of casual dining chains making menu foods sound more descriptive (with items such as "Succulent Italian Seafood Fillet") - since their research found more appetising names could increase sales by 23% and make people think the food tasted a lot better.
Super-sizes spell disaster
Any chocolate lover can tell you that buying a smaller bar is the easiest way to control how much chocolate you are going to eat. But surprisingly, studies show that if we're given a bigger portion of an unappetising food, we still manage to chomp our way through more.
Researchers randomly gave moviegoers either a medium-sized or large-sized bucket of stale popcorn. These people had all eaten dinner before attending the movie, so they weren't hungry. Still, the people given the large bucket consumed 35% more of the popcorn. And the popcorn was 14 days old!
The horizontal-vertical illusion
Even professionals in the food service industry are fooled by the size and shape of plates, bowls and glasses. Researchers recruited 45 experienced US bartenders to pour single shot drinks of gin, whiskey, rum and vodka with the proviso that they weren't allowed to use a measuring device or pouring spout.
Half the bartenders were given tall, thin glasses, and the other half were given short, wide tumblers. They were then required to manually pour one shot of spirits into their assigned glasses. Even the researchers were shocked by the results.
The bartenders consistently poured an average 27% more spirits into the short, wide tumblers compared with tall, slender glasses.
Convenience rules
Easy access to chocolates proved irresistible for US office workers. When researchers placed chocolates on the desks of office workers, the workers ate an average of 5.6 more chocolates each day than if the chocolates were placed two metres away on another table.
www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/3218619/The-psychology-of-eating
It takes around 20 minutes for the body and brain to recognise we are full, but most meals in western society are eaten so quickly, they are finished before the 20 minutes is up. Clearly, it isn't satiation of hunger which tells us to stop eating.
Rather than consider whether we're feeling full after each mouthful, we're more likely to trust our eyes and stop eating by judging what's left on our plate.
Our eyes also mislead us. We can't "see" kilojoules in a meal and we're not good at estimating the size of a meal on sight. Our eyes aren't good judges of food intake and worse, they're easily tempted.
Remember the "see food diet"? If we see food we think about it more. Our bodies then prepare for eating by increasing salivation and hormone production to process food, our hunger increases and consequently, we eat more.
And we don't remember exactly what we've already eaten. Did we have three or four biscuits with our coffee this afternoon? Normal- weight adults will underestimate their food intake by 20% while obese people underestimate their intake by 30-40%.
Our environment can also make us fat. It's Murphy's law that the day you decide to adopt a healthier eating pattern, your workmate shouts lunch; or you're unexpectedly given chocolates; or you're served a rather large expensive restaurant dinner you feel obliged to finish. Our environment can be a minefield when it comes to healthy eating intentions. Here's what research tells us:
Ad Feedback
* Big packages, servings, and super-sized meals subconsciously suggest big portions are normal.
* Bigger plates, glasses and serving spoons hold more, so we serve and eat more.
* Our brains focus on height rather than width. This is known as the horizontal- vertical illusion. We drink more from short, wide tumblers compared to tall, slender glasses.
* TV is a "triple eating threat", says Wansink. It encourages snacking, we don't concentrate on how much we eat, and we eat too long.
* We can't refuse supermarket offers like "buy two, get one free" and typically buy 30-100% more. And we eat more when it's stockpiled in our cupboards.
* Convenience costs us. Quick, easy access to food means there is no time to consider how hungry we really are.
* Drinks before dinner reduce our inhibitions, so we eat more than intended when enjoying a tipple.
* More food variety encourages overeating as we're biologically programmed to seek food diversity. Having abundant food supplies (for example, in restaurants, pantries and shops) spells trouble.
* Cooler temperatures, dimmed lighting and soft music all encourage overeating.
* "Healthy" restaurant perception can lull us into a false sense of security. Restaurants and fast food chains with healthy-sounding products and advertising create a "health halo" - we overeat at these outlets, thinking we can do no wrong.
* "Healthy" product perception such as fat- free labels and positive health claims may be amplified by consumers, according to Wansink. Consumers eat up to 50% more of low-fat products.
Here are some easy ways to change your habits:
* Think about whether you are really hungry.
Physical hunger appears slowly after a meal, your stomach rumbles, and the sensation disappears after eating. Emotional hunger involves cravings and often isn't satisfied by eating.
* Consciously decide how much to eat before you start your meal.
* Cut your portions, but not too much. Reducing the size of your meal by a fifth will mean you eat less, but you won't notice nor feel deprived.
* Eyeball your food. Whatever the meal, put all the food you plan to eat on your plate instead of picking from serving dishes on the table. Then you can see and understand the quantities.
* Be the last person to start eating at meals, and put your knife and fork down between bites.
* Save empty treat wrappers as a reminder of how many treats you have eaten over the day/week.
* Create food trade-offs or food policies, suggests Wansink. For example, tell yourself, "I can have dessert only if I take a 30-minute walk first." Or, "I can only eat snacks away from my work desk" (this gives you time to reconsider your desire).
* Eat more slowly. Some suggestions are to eat using utensils in your non-dominant hand, chew your food 30-50 times each mouthful, make a healthy-sized plate of food last 20 minutes, and pace yourself with the slowest eater at the table.
* Think laterally. For example, order an entree and side salad instead of an over- sized main when dining out.
Use smaller plates and bowls - they discourage overeating.
* Keep treat and snack foods out of sight and out of mind. Seal in non-transparent containers and place on top shelves of the pantry. Wrap tempting leftovers in tinfoil and store at the back of the fridge.
* Place healthy, low-energy foods at the front of the pantry and fridge.
* Use smaller serving spoons so you'll take smaller servings.
* Make snacking inconvenient. Put snack and treat foods somewhere you have to get up and walk to - or better still, don't have them in the house, so if you really want a treat, you have to go out to get it.
* Avoid temptation. Don't drive past the takeaway shop, don't walk through the kitchen, turn off the TV to avoid food adverts - develop a plan to avoid your weaknesses.
* Make eating seconds inconvenient. Leave serving dishes in the kitchen - the walk from the table deters overeating.
* Eat at the dinner table, not in front of the TV, computer or while reading
* For more great ideas, recipes and articles, see the latest issue of Healthy Food Guide magazine, only $5.50 in supermarkets and bookstores nationwide. nwww.healthyfood.co.nz
What the research says
See food, eat it!
The phrase "bottomless bowl" gained new meaning when Brian Wansink and his research team designed self-refilling soup bowls. Fifty-four adults were recruited to eat as much free soup as they desired for lunch and fill out a questionnaire - at least that's what they thought.
In reality, half the participants were given bowls that secretly self-refilled as soup was pumped up from underneath their table into the bowl as they ate. The other half were given bowls that were openly refilled by waiters.
Those with self-refilling bowls thought they had eaten the same quantity as the others, when they had eaten a whopping 73% more. Visual cues affected intake. As long as there was soup in the bowl, they kept eating, unaware of how much they were truly consuming.
Our environment makes us eat more
Distractions during mealtime caused women participating in a French study to eat significantly more than normal. The women were invited to eat lunch in four different laboratory situations in four successive weeks: alone without instruction; alone with instruction on how to eat; alone while listening to a recorded detective story; and at a lunch with all the women together.
The women ate between 200-400kJ more energy during the meal they consumed while listening to the recorded detective story. The researchers believe listening to a story presented sufficient distraction to alter normal eating habits.
The "healthy halo" effect
If a food product says "low-fat", do you eat more? Probably. In a US study, adults were directed to one of two bowls of unusually coloured M&Ms (gold, teal, purple and white) and invited to help themselves.
The bowls were labelled either "New colours of regular M&Ms" or "New low-fat M&Ms". On average, people ate 28% more of the supposedly low-fat variety. In another study, researchers asked participants to estimate suitable serving sizes for M&Ms and muesli.
Half the participants were told these were low-fat versions of the food, the others were told they were regular versions. When people saw a food labelled "low-fat", they estimated an appropriate serving size to be 25% bigger. These studies found we often assume the energy (kilojoule) content of a food is much less in foods labelled "low-fat" than it really is.
Menu descriptions affect our choices
Research by Wansink and his colleagues has been taken on board by the food and beverage industry in the US. He provides the example of casual dining chains making menu foods sound more descriptive (with items such as "Succulent Italian Seafood Fillet") - since their research found more appetising names could increase sales by 23% and make people think the food tasted a lot better.
Super-sizes spell disaster
Any chocolate lover can tell you that buying a smaller bar is the easiest way to control how much chocolate you are going to eat. But surprisingly, studies show that if we're given a bigger portion of an unappetising food, we still manage to chomp our way through more.
Researchers randomly gave moviegoers either a medium-sized or large-sized bucket of stale popcorn. These people had all eaten dinner before attending the movie, so they weren't hungry. Still, the people given the large bucket consumed 35% more of the popcorn. And the popcorn was 14 days old!
The horizontal-vertical illusion
Even professionals in the food service industry are fooled by the size and shape of plates, bowls and glasses. Researchers recruited 45 experienced US bartenders to pour single shot drinks of gin, whiskey, rum and vodka with the proviso that they weren't allowed to use a measuring device or pouring spout.
Half the bartenders were given tall, thin glasses, and the other half were given short, wide tumblers. They were then required to manually pour one shot of spirits into their assigned glasses. Even the researchers were shocked by the results.
The bartenders consistently poured an average 27% more spirits into the short, wide tumblers compared with tall, slender glasses.
Convenience rules
Easy access to chocolates proved irresistible for US office workers. When researchers placed chocolates on the desks of office workers, the workers ate an average of 5.6 more chocolates each day than if the chocolates were placed two metres away on another table.