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Celaeno
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 2995
Location: Kzoo
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 Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 6:49 pm Post subject: Seduced by Snacks? No, Not You |
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KIM SEVERSON
| Kim Severson with nytimes wrote: | Ithaca, N.Y.
PEOPLE almost always think they are too smart for Prof. Brian Wansink’s quirky experiments in the psychology of overindulgence.
When it comes to the slippery issues of snacking and portion control, no one thinks he or she is the schmo who digs deep into the snack bowl without thinking, or orders dessert just because a restaurant plays a certain kind of music.
“To a person, people will swear they aren’t influenced by the size of a package or how much variety there is on a buffet or the fancy name on a can of beans, but they are,” Dr. Wansink said. “Every time.”
He has the data to prove it. Dr. Wansink, who holds a doctorate in marketing from Stanford University and directs the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, probably knows more about why we put things in our mouths than anybody else. His experiments examine the cues that make us eat the way we do. The size of an ice cream scoop, the way something is packaged and whom we sit next to all influence how much we eat. His research doesn’t pave a clear path out of the obesity epidemic, but it does show the significant effect one’s eating environment has on slow and steady weight gain.
In an eight-seat lab designed to look like a cozy kitchen, Dr. Wansink offers free lunches in exchange for hard data. He opened the lab at Cornell in April, after he moved it from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he spent eight years conducting experiments in cafeterias, grocery stores and movie theaters. Dr. Wansink presents his work to dieticians, food executives and medical professionals. They use it to get people to eat differently.
His research on how package size accelerates consumption led, in a roundabout way, to the popular 100-calorie bags of versions of Wheat Thins and Oreos, which are promoted for weight management. Although food companies have long used packaging and marketing techniques to get people to buy more food, Dr. Wansink predicts companies will increasingly use some of his research to help people eat less or eat better, even if it means not selling as much food. He reasons that companies will make up the difference by charging more for new packaging that might slow down consumption or that put seemingly healthful twists on existing brands. And they get to wear a halo for appearing to do their part to prevent obesity.
To his mind, the 65 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese got that way, in part, because they didn’t realize how much they were eating.
“We don’t have any idea what the normal amount to eat is, so we look around for clues or signals,” he said. “When all you see is that big portions of food cost less than small ones, it can be confusing.”
Although people think they make 15 food decisions a day on average, his research shows the number is well over 200. Some are obvious, some are subtle. The bigger the plate, the larger the spoon, the deeper the bag, the more we eat. But sometimes we decide how much to eat based on how much the person next to us is eating, sometimes moderating our intake by more than 20 percent up or down to match our dining companion.
Much of his work is outlined in the book “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” (Bantam), which will be published on Tuesday. The book is his fourth over all, but his first directed at a general audience. It is peppered with his goofy, appealing Midwestern humor and practical diet tips. But the most fascinating material is directly from his studies on university campuses and in test kitchens for institutions like the United States Army.
An appalling example of our mindless approach to eating involved an experiment with tubs of five-day-old popcorn. Moviegoers in a Chicago suburb were given free stale popcorn, some in medium-size buckets, some in large buckets. What was left in the buckets was weighed at the end of the movie. The people with larger buckets ate 53 percent more than people with smaller buckets. And people didn’t eat the popcorn because they liked it, he said. They were driven by hidden persuaders: the distraction of the movie, the sound of other people eating popcorn and the Pavlovian popcorn trigger that is activated when we step into a movie theater.
Dr. Wansink is particularly proud of his bottomless soup bowl, which he and some undergraduates devised with insulated tubing, plastic dinnerware and a pot of hot tomato soup rigged to keep the bowl about half full. The idea was to test which would make people stop eating: visual cues, or a feeling of fullness.
People using normal soup bowls ate about nine ounces. The typical bottomless soup bowl diner ate 15 ounces. Some of those ate more than a quart, and didn’t stop until the 20-minute experiment was over. When asked to estimate how many calories they had consumed, both groups thought they had eaten about the same amount, and 113 fewer calories on average than they actually had.
Last week in his lab seven people were finishing lunch while watching a big-screen TV. Cartoons on the TV served as a distraction so participants would not be influenced by what and how much those nearby ate.
Because he does not take money from food companies and is a newcomer at the university, the lab runs on the cheap. The menus, like the one on this day, are often built from Beefaroni, applesauce, M&M’s and Chex Mix: simple, inexpensive food that subjects are familiar with and that can be easily manipulated.
He prefers to experiment on graduate students or office workers, whom he sometimes lures with the promise of a drawing for an iPod. “It’s easy to find undergraduates to participate, but with the guys nothing makes sense because they all eat like animals,” he said.
On this day he is testing how much people eat depending on whether they have exercised. Over the past several weeks they have sent subjects, some who have exercised and some who have not, through an unlimited buffet line. By measuring the difference between how much and what people eat depending on whether they have exercised, Dr. Wansink hopes to prove that even moderate exercise makes us think we are entitled to many more calories than we actually burned.
“Geez Louise, you can’t believe how much people eat to overcompensate,” he said.
Those kinds of things — intuitive bits we know about food but think we are either immune to or don’t think about — are the spine of “Mindless Eating.” In it he outlines an eating plan based on simple awareness. Employ a few tricks and you can take in 100 to 300 fewer calories a day. At the end of a year you could be 10 to 30 pounds lighter.
For example, sit next to the person you think will be the slowest eater when you go to a restaurant, and be the last one to start eating. Plate high-calorie foods in the kitchen but serve vegetables family style. Never eat directly from a package. Wrap tempting food in foil so you don’t see it. At a buffet put only two items on your plate at a time.
His dieting methods aren’t as fast as the Atkins plan or even Weight Watchers, and have little to do with matters that consume nutrition researchers or even culinarians. Dr. Wansink is not that guy. Although he has studied to be a sommelier and keeps a mental list of his 100 best meals, he drinks vats of Diet Coke and will inhale a box of Burger King Cini-mini rolls with no apologies. He doesn’t think that his work will solve the obesity problem, but it’s a start.
“It’s like a big pyramid,” he said. “The people at 30,000 feet can look down and say we need a wholesale change in our food system, in school lunches, in the way we farm.” At the bottom of the pyramid, he said, are the nutritionists and the diet fanatics who think the problem will be solved by examining every nutrient and calorie.
Dr. Wansink does his research for the person in the middle, the guy on the sofa who can appreciate a good meal, whether it is from Le Bernardin or Le Burger King.
“Will being more mindful about how we eat make everyone 100 pounds lighter next year?” he said. “No, but it might make them 10 pounds lighter.”
And the best part, he promises, is that you won’t even notice. |
Even though it's pretty much common sense stuff, I thought the article was really interesting and wanted to share.
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Marik
Joined: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 1233
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:21 pm Post subject: oop, liquid diet |
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I eat that which is put before me, and I generally eat until I run out of portion or become physically discomforted by the notion of eating even another bite. So, oh yes my intake is manipulated easily by portion and availability and even social context!
But even when I'm done eating, I've still got enough room for two more cups of liquid at least. What's up with that? |
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kame
Joined: 11 Jul 2006
Posts: 2563
Location: Alba Nuadh
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Fills in any gaps? |
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Halen
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 1877
Location: England
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject: Re: oop, liquid diet |
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| Marik wrote: | I eat that which is put before me, and I generally eat until I run out of portion or become physically discomforted by the notion of eating even another bite. So, oh yes my intake is manipulated easily by portion and availability and even social context!
But even when I'm done eating, I've still got enough room for two more cups of liquid at least. What's up with that? |
It's called "sensory specific satiety". You get full for one set of tastes. It's why you can find room for pudding. |
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thewaitersitsondown
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 2673
Location: The walrus was Paul
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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That's, like, totally true and stuff.
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TORTOISE RUGBY. |
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jeep
Joined: 11 Jul 2006
Posts: 501
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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Damnit that reminds me i forgot to make my jello last night!!!!
And it takes 4 hours to set.....
FUCK |
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WheelsOfConfusion
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 11138
Location: Unknown Kaddath
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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I'm pretty sure I read an article about the effects of environment on appetite about four or five months ago. It was mainly harping on the size of the plate the food was put upon.
Halen: Should've eaten your meat. |
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Kilgore
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 2827
Location: Portland, Or
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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Luckily I'm also seduced by exercise.
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"Whatever afflicts thee, their asses I shall kick"
-Slick |
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Snorri
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 10706
Location: hiding the decline.
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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| thewaitersitsondown wrote: | | Penis! |
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thewaitersitsondown
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 2673
Location: The walrus was Paul
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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Oh shit am I doing that Freudian slip thing again?
Shit.
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TORTOISE RUGBY. |
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Snorri
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 10706
Location: hiding the decline.
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:32 pm Post subject: There's nothing Freudian about that! |
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You seem to be obsessed with fallic symbols. *starts rubbing his long, hard, red, throbbing, steel-like, gigantic....
.......PENIS!
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Just_A_Girl
Joined: 11 Jul 2006
Posts: 527
Location: Lost in America
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:04 am Post subject: |
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This article was really interesting. It's amazing how many factors contribute to our eating habits. Especially ones that we don't even think about.
I'd have to say that I agree with portion control being one of the biggest issues with eating too much/weight gain/diet related health issues. If not the biggest issue. Because from a healthy eating standpoint, you see people who buy all kinds of healthy foods and "low fat/no fat" foods, who still complain of gaining weight. There are two factors with that.
1. Healthy food is good for you, but eating all "low fat/no fat" food...isn't.
2. People can buy all the healthy food they want...but they have to realize that just because it's healthy, doesn't mean you can eat more of it. There are a lot of people out there who think "Oh, this is a healthy snack, I can eat as much as I want". But that isn't the case. Eating too much of something good for you will still make you gain weight.
Portion control has gotten way out of control. It's really surprising how many servings we actually eat during a day.
The one thing I didn't exactly agree with in the article was this | Quote: | | “We don’t have any idea what the normal amount to eat is, so we look around for clues or signals,” |
We do have something to go by. It's called Canada's Food Guide. Or the Food Pyramid, in the United States. (I'm sure other countries have similar things, I just don't happen to know what they are)
If you look at those two guides, you can get an idea of how much you need from each group.
For example, a single juice box can count as 2 servings of fruit. There are also other things like a medium size potato being the size of your fist.
What we percieve as a "normal" portion is actually much bigger than a single portion. That's just the way it is these days.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks at the Food Guide, sees that we should ingest 5-12 servings of Grain products per day and thinks "Yikes! I can't eat that much grain. I don't even like bread!" But in reality, when you look at proper portion sizes, it isn't hard to get as much as we need from each food group. Infact, you might even find you get too much from certain groups. Just one plate worth of pasta is equal to 3-4 servings from the grain group.
We don't really tend to think of eating and the food we ingest as a complicated thing. But when you really get into it, there is so much to it. "A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips" as one of my teachers said. We don't really think about it, but everything that goes into our mouth, has an effect on us and our health. |
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rm
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 4073
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:33 am Post subject: |
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I eat things quickly and then I forget about it. I hate eating. I hate shopping and cooking and eating and cleaning up. it's a monumental waste of time, imo.
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Major Tom
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 7562
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Just_A_Girl wrote: | | There are also other things like a medium size potato being the size of your fist. |
haha - maybe your fist |
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WheelsOfConfusion
Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 11138
Location: Unknown Kaddath
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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Okay guys, I have to tell you.
I was once seduced by a snack. It was an older snack, and I was fresh out of highschool. Looking back I can see so much wrong with the whole thing, but at the time I was just smitten by all that icing and creamy filling that I couldn't have told you right from left, let along right from wrong. I felt so... so used. In hindsight, this incident seems to explain a lot about me and my life since then, why I've become so closed and untrusting. emotionally stunted.
I don't know if I can ever have a healthy relationship with another foodstuff again. |
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