Washington, Nov 23: Perhaps even great thinkers like Plato or Aristotle would not be able to give a logical answer to the puzzling
‘Freakonomics’ of food, or why we eat more than we think?
Now, researchers have tried to find a possible answer to why we eat and how much we eat by using hidden cameras, two-way mirrors, and hundreds of studies.
"You can ask your smartest friend why he or she just ate what they ate, and you won’t get an answer any deeper than, 'It sounded good,'" says Brian Wansink, author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," and Professor and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
Take how much we eat. Wansink claims we typically don’t overeat because we are hungry or because the food tastes good. Instead we overeat because of the cues around us – family and friends, packages and plates, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers.
Consider a holiday ice cream bowl. Spooning 3 ounces of ice cream onto a small bowl will look like a lot more than if it were served in a large bowl.
During one holiday party, Wansink and his Lab put this to the test by inviting 63 distinguished nutritional science professors at a leading university to an holiday ice cream social. When they arrived, they were given either medium-size 17-ounce bowls or large-size 34-ounce bowls. "Even though these people think, sleep, lecture and study nutrition,"
Wansink said, "They still served themselves and ate 31 percent more ice cream (106 more calories) since they had been given a big bowl.
If experts can’t control mindless eating, what help is there for the rest of us" Here’s the good news he reassures "As Mindless Eating shows, what we eat and how much we eat – is so automatic, the easiest changes are those that are smallest. At a holiday buffet use smaller plate, or put only two items on your plate during any given trip to the table. Return as many times as you like, but only take two items each time.
Meticulous studies outline why we are consistently influenced, but they also provide the silver lining. If we know that we tend to pour 28% more into short wide glasses than in tall thin ones, the secret is simply getting rid of the short glasses.