“Fooled by Food”: Monday morning on Tuesday, the Conclusion

The exciting finale  from the article published in April, 2013 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  Professor Wansink of Cornell University was interviewed by CSPI.

When last you visited us, the focus was on “What… makes people happy with fewer calories?’.  The focus was home.  Here are additional arenas and strategies (home is addressed here too!) to keep you ahead of being fooled.

• Fast Food Restaurants:  A study was done where the results showed that when people ate at a fast food restaurant, in soft light, they ate eighteen percent fewer calories and they rated the food more appealing.  The reason:  It is hypothesized that since they stayed in the restaurant (during the study) 9 minutes longer with the changed ambiance, they were more relaxed and they ate more slowly.  Their satiety cues caught up given more time:  perhaps they realized their fullness & stopped eating.  Additionally, the food may have become cold and less appealing (french fries in a fast food joint) so they stopped eating.  The people may have had enough.  This works at home too.  The more relaxed the environment, the more relaxed you are, you eat more slowly, and you end up eating less (use quiet music, low TV sound, candlelight, etc.)
• Sit Down Restaurants:  Usually people spend more time in sit down restaurants than in fast food places.  Interestingly, according to Professor Wansink’s book:  “Slim by Design”, thinner people sit near windows and in lighter, well-traveled parts of the restaurant.  Heavier people sit near the TV, bar, and in dark corners.  In these spots, they spend more time, which may explain why they are over eating.

Bottom line:  Be as relaxed as you can in your eating environment, focusing on eating, i.e. your speed & quantity ingested (also ENJOYING!).  Try to sit in the open when you are out at a sit down place.  You probably won’t find low light/quietness at McDonald’s, so eat slowly & enjoy & pay attention to your body’s cues 😉

• Stress!  For college students, it was found that they generally eat healthier when they arrive on campus.  As the year goes on, they slowly begin eating less healthy.  It is, in part, because of final exams.  More than that, though,  it is because of the overload of papers and projects throughout the entire year.  In similar observations of stress with non-college students, i.e. holidays, it was found that people stress eat because of the apprehension of having family visit, having to buy presents, having to finish projects.

Bottom line:  Be aware!  Discover stress relief that does not involve eating.  Try:  yoga, meditation, “Am I really hungry?”, keep a food diary, get support from the people around you, take a walk, watch a movie, listen to music, surf the internet, call a friend, don’t keep unhealthy food in the house/near you (go out and have them as a treat), make set-backs turn into positive experiences…..

 

• Keeping food on your desk.  Don’t do it (common sense)!  People who have a bowl of chocolate sitting on their desk eat about 125 more calories per day than if the chocolate is just six feet away.

 

• Grocery Shopping.  Studies have shown that people really do NOT buy more when you grocery shop hungry.  BUT they buy fewer healthy foods, and more convenient, highly processed food that they can eat quickly (breakfast cereals, frozen food, Hamburger Helper, candy, and crackers).  They stay away from fruits, vegetables, and healthy dairy.  The mere thought of how long it would be before they would be able to eat a chicken/vegetable stir-fry sways them to buy the fast, convenient, generally higher calorie/fat/sodium/sugar foods.

Want to know more?  Professor Wansink has a new book:  “Slim by Design:  Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life”.  The premise:  80% of the food we buy is within ~3 miles of where we live (food radius).  Choose the 5 places that cause you to overeat (they can be home and work along with the grocery store or a restaurant).  Make small changes in each of these places.  You can become slim by design!

And the last word on this series….  There is now a Slim by Design Global Registry:  www.SlimByDesign.org  It registers people who have been slim all of their lives.  By studying the habits, patterns, tips, and attitudes of these people, their goal is to help others learn some secrets and insights they have used to stay slim.  Use it as a resource!

“Fooled by Food”: The Cliff Hanger at the End of the Week!

The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s article featuring the wisdom from the research of Professor Brian Wansink, Cornell University, offers the cliff hanger for this week.  Practical information for you!

The price of food:  does it influence how much people buy?  The answer is not simple.  How much you buy obviously depends on how much money you have.  Being below the poverty line, you have to buy the smaller items because you are budgeted, according to Wansink.  “… if you’re above the poverty line, you can afford larger items.  That’s where you get the Costco or Sam’s Club effect.  You buy large quantities because you’re saving money.”, says Wansink.  The Professor wrote a book called “Mindless Eating”.  In it he speaks to studies that show that when items like juice boxes, granola bars, small bags of chips, etc. are individually packaged, you end up eating them more frequently:  seven times per week vs. four.  BUT, “if you buy a larger package of cereal or ground beef or pasta or pretzels, you eat more every time you open it.” – Wansink.  The practical tip for portion/calorie control is to NOT avoid big packages. Divide the big packages into smaller packages and to put them somewhere that you don’t see them all the time/can store them/can’t easily get to them.  If you are buying small packages, put them away for the same reasons.  Out of sight = out of mind = less chance of over eating!

Another idea for healthy snacking comes from this study at Cornell.  200 kids were given either all-they-could-eat chips OR a combination of cut-up vegetables and round Babybel cheeses while they watched TV.  Kids given the chips ate 620 calories’ worth, but kids given the cheese/vegetables ate only 170 calories’ worth.  In overweight kids the difference was even more pronounced:  they ate more chips than the others.  The reasoning is quite simple.  Cheese/vegetables take longer to chew.  The combination was more satisfying because it’s fun to eat and there’s more variety in creamy cheese and crunchy vegetables.  The study was done on  women, and the results were similar.  Wansink has no data (yet) for men, but hypothesizes that it will be also similar.  The obvious practical tip:  serve crunchy vegetables with low fat creamy dip!

Trigger Foods (simple psychology!)…  Another study at the buffet indicated that the first food that people saw influenced what they took even if they didn’t take that food.  If they saw a bowl of fruit first, they were more likely to take more fruit than eggs and bacon.  If they saw eggs and bacon first, they took more of that than fruit.  AT HOME:  Make sure that the first food you see and serve is the healthiest food on the table.  Serve the vegetables/fruit first!

What makes people happy with fewer calories?  The Cornell researchers again checked this out by giving folks snacks to find out how much eaten would cause them to be satisfied.  They found that once people swallow something they do not have much memory of how much they ate.  If you are served and eat something tasty in a large or a small portion, 15 minutes after you ate it, you remember that it was yummy, but you do not remember how many bites you took.  So with cravings, take a small bite/amount of something that you crave, wait 10 minutes, and your craving will have been satisfied.  If you are at risk of bingeing because there is more of the craved food right in front of you, eat that small amount, and go to the restroom, walk around the block, bring your laundry basket upstairs and put away 10 min of laundry, write an email, etc.  The distraction will save you from eating more, and you will have satisfied your craving.  This does not work when a person is truly hungry.  Often when we crave, it is not related to hunger!

Here’s a visual to leave you with re: your plates!

Have a delightful weekend, and thank a Veteran!  Coming next week: more tips for you.

“Fooled by Food”: part THREE

“Big Food” will do just about anything to sell their product to you so that they will make a profit.  It’s psychological manipulation using visuals and with fat, salt, & sugar mixed in for measure.  At home, people can work at interventions to change “Big Food” success.

Changing the sizes of the glasses, bowls, and dishes that you use at home to smaller is a place to start.  When all of your glasses are 8oz, a 16 or 20oz glass looks enormous.  If you have in your cupboards 2 cup bowls versus 4 cup bowls, you will likely eat less cereal:  you can’t overflow the 2 cup bowl, and your brain will think the full 2 cup bowl full of cereal is enough.

Eat among healthy eaters who know portion sizes and practice portion control (work on it together!).  Professor Brian Wansink of Cornell University reports in the  CSPI April edition that, “We brought young men and women into buffet lines and tracked how much they took of different foods compared to what the people in front of them took.  When the woman in front took, …, one cup more food than average, the woman behind would behave similarly.  This is the strongest for women, but has no impact on guys.”.

Dr Wansink also gave us insight as to pictures on boxes!  College students were shown 3-D mockup packages with pictures of either just a few crackers or many crackers on the front.  The students were given a survey with small bags of crackers (each had 30 crackers inside).  They were told that they could eat the crackers while they took the survey.  The students who saw the boxes with more crackers on the front ate more crackers.  When asked how many crackers are in a serving,  the students who saw the box with the picture of more crackers guessed a higher number.

– Picture taken from the CSPI’s “Nutrition Action Health Letter”, April 2013 edition, page 4

The health halo tricks people ALL THE TIME!  People were given ordinary foods that were labeled “organic” or not.  When they thought the foods were organic, they rated the calories about 20% lower.  Health halos follow foods that say “pesticide free”, “locally grown”,  “gluten-free”, etc.  Almost any food with a healthful identifier makes people think the calories are lower, even if the claim has NOTHING to do with calories.

Last word for today…..

People DO underestimate the calories in restaurant meals.  They underestimate by TWENTY FIVE PERCENT.  Professor Wansink reports that if people break things down by the components of the meal:  “how many calories are in that sandwich?  How many in those fries?  How many in that drink? – people are much more accurate.”.  So your nugget in summing the calories in your meal:  take the components of it  apart then add them up.  Looking at the individual items will help you be more accurate.  Remember:

• The higher the calories, the more we tend to underestimate.
• Studies have shown that the bigger the meal is, the more people underestimate how much they eat.
• When meals are bigger, the underestimation is up to 50%.

Check in tomorrow!  Practical tips are coming!!!!

“Fooled by Food”: episode 2

Yesterday the series began.  Information comes directly from CSPI’s April, 2013 edition….

Professor Brian Wansink from Cornell University exposes us to how to avoid being “Fooled by Food”.

• When we choose the “small” size of food/fluid we do not eat less!  The example Wansink offers is as follows.  A person has 2 packages of cookies that are each 20oz.  The first is labeled “small” the second, “medium”.  The person who gets the bag labeled “small” will think that, “Since it’s small, I can eat a lot.  The bag says small, so I’m not overindulging”.  The same package, labeled “medium” or “large” will have less eaten from it.
• Studies show that people actually prefer MEDIUM sizes.  It’s known as the “Golden Mean”.  Here’s how Wansink describes it working:  “If McDonald’s wants people to buy more 12oz soft drinks, they should introduce a new 8oz “small”.  People would then choose the 12oz “medium” more often because they tend to shy away from extreme sizes on either end.
• People do NOT prefer a larger size for value.  Even if all drink sizes cost the same amount of money, 60% will get either a “medium” or a “small”:  most get “medium”.  It is expected that people will take everything that they can get for free.  They don’t.

Next time….  Applying this to home, & more!

Fooled By Food: The Series….

“Nutrition Action”, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest offers FANTASTIC information for consumers.  (You too can subscribe to their news letter:  http://www.cspinet.org)

In their April, 2013 edition, the cover article was:  “Fooled by Food:  How to trick yourself into eating less”.  Today is the first in a series to help you, based on the article.

It’s been noted that we live in gross proximity to food 24/7.  Cornell University professor Brian Wansink is noted as saying, “We’re always yards away from either a refrigerator or a restaurant or a vending machine.  That wasn’t the case a few decades ago.”  With this, we are perpetually being tempted by food and having to decide whether or not to eat!  With the constant bombardment, often we are beat down to just eating.  If we recognize WHY we overeat, maybe we can begin to eat when we are hungry.

Professor Wansink talks about being fooled by food.  He says:

• We eat because food tastes good or because we are hungry, BUT the reality of why we eat is prominently because food is constantly available.  There’s nothing to stop us from grabbing food and eating it:  we do this mindlessly.
• People want to be at a healthy weight.  To do this, people need to think “skinny”, not “wide”.  People pay more attention to height:  they are in greater danger of overeating from a wide bowl than a taller, skinnier one.  In nature, tall is more threatening than wide.  Tall is more threatening as a predator.  People do not see wide things as a threat.  So….  let kids (& you) pick a tall skinny snack:  it will generally have less than a similar wide one & kids/you will think it has more.
• Food Companies will shrink only the width of packages (not the height) when they make packages smaller.  Think of several companies changing the amount of pasta they sell from 16 to 12oz.  People generally underestimate how much a package holds when all three of its dimensions increase (height, width, and depth).  So:  “If you buy a large popcorn, and it is twice as tall as small, we’d see it.  But if it’s a little bigger top to bottom, side to side, and front to back, you may not see that it holds twice as much.”
• We DO eat more when we use larger bowls and spoons!  If you serve people (including kids as young as FOUR) food in a larger bowl, they serve themselves 28% more than if the bowl was smaller.  Experts are even fooled.  Cues (big bowls/utensils) are not stoppable in terms of controlling of how much we put in.   The best way to practice portion control by using smaller bowls, plates, and spoons.

Want to know more?  Stay tuned for the continuing saga……