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Subconscious Eating

Writing 220

Blog-style articles that discuss the environmental and social factors that can affect how much we eat.

Subconscious Eating

It’s more than just hunger.

By Sophia Peng, B.S.

 

Is Your Dinnerware Making You Eat?

It may not be your fault that you just ate 4 cheeseburgers, 2 plates of fries, and a milkshake––or not entirely at least.

 

Published on October 11, 2013 by Sophia Peng, B.S. in Subconscious Eating

 

 

Have you ever eaten that last bite of steak and mashed potatoes knowing you shouldn’t? Your stomach was already stretched to twice its size, but you just couldn’t help yourself. We’ve all had those moments of weakness when we can’t resist the food in front of us. As crazy as it sounds, it might be the size and color of your dinnerware that’s pushing you past your limit.

 

It’s hard to know when you’re overeating if you don’t know what an appropriate serving size is. Plate and utensil sizes in the house have been getting increasingly bigger over the past twenty years, so we may unknowingly be overestimating serving size and putting more and more food on our plates. Many people estimate quantity based on how many scoops they use or how full the plate is, but how often or accurately do we take the differences in size into account? For example, take these two plates of equal serving size:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which plate looks like it has more food on it? Most would say the one on the right despite the fact that they offer the exact same portion, but who would notice that unless they were compared side by side like this. Research (by Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and Koert Van Ittersum, a professor of marketing and consumer well-being at Georgia Tech) shows that size is relative. The idea is that our perceived size of a circle depends on the size of the circle that surrounds it, so food appears smaller than it actually is when surrounded by a much larger plate (like the image on the left does). We think more is better, so naturally we pile food on our plate until it seems satisfactorily full. No one wants to worry about not having enough to eat. Unfortunately, we also feel obligated to clear our plate, even if we aren’t hungry anymore, because we often use an empty plate as a signal to stop eating. Seeing it empty tells our brain that we’re full, so we keep eating until we think we should be full: when every last morsel has been eaten. Nothing feels more satisfying than seeing an empty plate scraped clean of sauce and feeling a food coma take over.

 

But hold on. Even if your plate is normal-sized and proportionate to the right serving size, what about your tablecloth? How could something as trivial as a tablecloth subconsciously influence eating? As it turns out, color contrast plays an important role in how much we serve. High color contrast between your plate and tablecloth, such as a black plate against a white tablecloth or vice versa, enhances the illusion previously described, so you serve more than the target serving size on large plates and less on small plates. Interestingly, low color contrast between your plate and food increases your likelihood to overserve as your brain works harder to differentiate your food from your plate and to figure out how much to serve. Picking your plates and tablecloths based on color is a good idea if you’re planning to match your dining room, but not so much if you’re trying to stop yourself from repeatedly overeating.

 

It’s even possible to be fooled by the shape of the glasses we drink from. We tend to think tall glasses can hold more than wide ones of the same volume, so we end up pouring more into the wide, short glasses because we focus our attention on the height of the filling liquid without considering width. It seems our instincts aren’t always as accurate as we’d like them to be.

 

Generally, large-sized containers and packaging tend to create illusions of intake and portion that give us inaccurate consumption cues. When handed a large plate, most of us subconsciously decide this is the portion size we’re expected to eat, so we self-serve accordingly. Restaurants have also supersized their dinnerware (perhaps so that we leave feeling full and content and more likely to return), encouraging us to eat more than the recommended serving size. The huge bowl of soup the waiter places before you tells you that that’s what the restaurant believes is the amount you would need to eat in order to be full, so you try to eat all of it, or more than you normally would or need in order to not be hungry anymore. Even using either large or small spoons can have an impact on establishing apparent consumption norms that influence our food intake. Each large spoonful will obviously contain more, but who’s going to notice the difference between a large and small spoonful when feeding yourself any spoonful uses the same motion and amount of energy? It seems more reasonable and normal for us to eat the amount implied perceptually than the actual serving size necessary to fill us up.

 

Having better control over the amount of you eat can be as simple as being more aware of what you’re eating with and making smarter choices when purchasing dinnerware and silverware. Your brain has been tricking you into eating more for years. It’s your turn to trick it into eating less.

Subconscious Eating

It’s more than just hunger.

By Sophia Peng, B.S.

 

More Comfort, More Food

The environment we eat in may be quietly feeding us.

 

 

Published on October 18, 2013 by Sophia Peng, B.S. in Subconscious Eating

 

 

You’re sitting at a candlelight, romantic dinner with your boyfriend of five years. There is a trio of cellists playing quietly in the background. You nurse a glass of wine as the smell of bread, spices, and pasta sauces surrounds you. You have fifteen pages of mouthwatering foods to choose from. Things could not be more perfect. Perfect for overeating.

 

Food does more than just silence your grumbling stomach. From personal experience, you probably know that food can influence mood, social interaction, and culture, but interestingly, mood, social interaction, and culture can also influence our food choices. Our emotional state and social setting can implicitly impact the amount of food we eat.

 

As nice as the candles are for setting the mood, the dim warm lighting they create is actually making you eat more by increasing your comfort level and eating duration. The warmth and coziness relaxes you and makes you feel more positive. The low lights make you feel less self-conscious and inhibited, so you don’t feel as if you’re being watched or judged when you choose off the menu or eat. You feel more at ease and confident and focus less on the actual eating while you talk to your significant other, which causes you to consume more than you normally would.

 

Similarly, the soft music relaxes you and encourages you to eat at a slower rate, so that you are more likely to finish your plate (which is also getting increasingly larger in restaurants, and with that, portion size). And not to say the wine you are drinking is definitely pushing you to eat more. Many people tend to have increased appetite after drinking alcoholic beverages, so drinking before or while eating may make you think you’re hungrier than you actually are and the next thing you know, that entire dish of chicken piccata is gone and you’re left feeling extremely stuffed and sleepy.

 

As you look over the menu and read all the descriptions, you are overwhelmed with all the options you have. You can’t decide what to get because everything sounds absolutely delicious, from the chicken marsala with mushrooms to the chargrilled coulotte steak. Restaurants have been making their menu items sound more descriptive to make their foods seem more appetizing and tasty. For example, doesn’t “farfalle with chicken, mushrooms, tomato, pancetta, peas and caramelized onions in a roasted garlic-parmesan cream sauce” sound far better than “pasta with chicken and vegetables”? Using colorful words is a smart tactic restaurants use to get you excited about the food you’re about to eat. If you believe what you’re about to eat will taste good, your actual experience is likely to be similar to your expectations.

 

As you wait for your food, you laugh, smile, and chat, but the good atmosphere is not enough to distract you from the smells of foods your neighbors are dining on. As the inescapable, delectable odors surround you, your hunger becomes intertwined with your anticipation for the arrival of your own dish and when it finally does, your excitement is at its peak. The first bite, which tends to have the strongest taste and to create the strongest sensation, is wondrous. The long wait and scrumptiousness of the first bite make your food seem even more attractive and you eat as much as you can to savor the taste. Together with all the other environmental factors that are making you extremely content and at ease, you are in a great mood at this point and when you’re in a happy mood, you eat more because you tend to live in the moment and consider the future less, such as the impending food coma or weight gain that may occur.

 

Even if you aren’t on such a perfect, romantic date with your boyfriend, whom you feel very comfortable and uninhibited with, eating with friends can have the same effect. When you eat with familiar, friendly company, you tend to talk more and talking causes you to linger. As your staying time increases, so does your likelihood to finish all your food and order more food. When you’re having enjoyable conversations, you want to stay and continue them and environmental factors, such as the smell and sight of food, press down on you and urge you to get more food. A dessert, an alcoholic beverage, or coffee sounds like a good thing to munch or sip on while you listen and chat.

 

Not that there’s anything wrong with eating in an amiable environment and enjoying your food as much as your company, but it’s worth noting that positive emotions and states can actually make you eat more. Most people associate emotional eating with depression and sadness and think that we only overeat for bad reasons, however it’s also true that we eat more because we’re happy. Eating often enhances our mood and attitude (as you’ve probably experienced after eating after being hungry for an extended period of time), but the ambience can also enhance our eating, which can then further enhance our positive emotional state. We frequently correlate food with our experiences, so a pleasant environment often inspires a positive perspective of the food, which makes us more likely to eat more and to enjoy it more. While constant overeating is hardly a good thing for your health or lifestyle, indulging at times may just be indications that you’re having a good time.

Subconscious Eating

It’s more than just hunger.

By Sophia Peng, B.S.

 

How Can I Stop Eating So Much?

8 simple ways to control how much you eat.

 

 

Published on October 25, 2013 by Sophia Peng, B.S. in Subconscious Eating

 

 

It’s hard to be in control of portion sizes when supersized food packaging and enormous restaurant servings surround us. Food is often presented to us in ways that subtly encourage our intake and appetite. So what’s the big deal if we eat a bit more once in awhile? It’s not if it’s an occasional occurrence, but that’s often not the case. It’s easy to develop a habit of overeating when you’re unaware of the constant cues that not only tell you to eat, but also tell you to eat a lot.

 

If you’re concerned about eating more than you should, take control of your food by not allowing yourself to be tempted into eating more than the recommended serving size. Try these simple tips that can help you act proactively and eat healthier:

 

1. Avoid buffets.

One of the easiest places to overeat is a buffet. You see shrimp, beef, chicken, pasta, the lobster, fried vegetables, and egg rolls on one side of the restaurant. And then you turn around and see rice, varieties of soup, fish, the stir fry, and sushi on the other. It’s hard for anyone to contain themselves. Additionally, the sign that says “All You Can Eat For $14.95!” is essentially challenging you to eat more than $14.95 worth of food, so you load up plate after plate and eat until you feel like you’re having trouble breathing. It’s easy to keep eating when there is so much variety and you feel compelled to try everything and get your money’s worth. If you do go, a nice way to control yourself is to have no more than two different foods on your plate at the same time to make it less convenient for you to eat all that they have to offer and to reduce the perception of variety.

 

2. Organize the foods on your plate.

The placement of your foods in a disorderly fashion can actually increase the appearance of variety. For example, multiple bowls of the same food or lots of color within the same plate may create an illusion of a larger assortment than actually exists. When the same food is scattered rather than concentrated in one place, it’s harder to determine the exact quantity. You think there’s less than there actually is of that food within the mixture of foods present, so you compensate by taking or eating more. You don’t have to separate out all the foods in your salad, but when serving yourself multiple kinds of foods, keeping those separate will help increase your awareness of the amount of food present.

 

3. Place healthier foods towards the front of the fridge and less healthy foods in the back.

If you can’t resist the urge to eat, you’re more likely to snack on healthier foods if they’re placed in the front because you see them first and they’re more accessible than the less healthy foods located in the back. So if you must eat, at least eat foods that are good for you.

 

4. Out of sight, out of mind!

You’re less likely to think about eating if you’re not looking at food. Don’t place the jar of candy on your worktable or the cookie jar on your kitchen countertop; store these tempting foods in less convenient locations, such as a pantry or cupboard that has a closed door. Wrapping food in foil also makes them less visible, and thus, more forgettable. Simply reducing the visibility and convenience of food can greatly reduce your consumption volume.

 

5. Don’t eat out of the box or bag.

We often buy family size boxes or bags of foods because it’s cheaper that way. However, when you eat them directly out of the box or bag, it’s easy to lose track of how much you’re eating and just keep reaching back in. You should repackage the food into smaller containers so that you don’t risk eating more than a certain amount at one time.

 

6. Use smaller bowls, plates, and utensils.

Larger bowls and plates give the expectation that you should eat the amount suggested by the container size rather than the appropriate amount that may only fill it halfway. Using smaller ones will decrease the chances of overeating if you’re only focused on filling the container. Similarly, you eat larger mouthfuls when you eat with a large spoon or fork, but who’s going to account for the difference between a larger and small spoonful in their mind while they’re eating? Using smaller dinnerware and silverware can save you that trouble.

 

7. Replace short wide glasses with tall narrow ones.

We tend to think tall narrow glasses can hold more than short wide ones because we focus on the height of the filling liquid without considering the width of the container, so we usually end up pouring more into wider glasses. You can spare your mind the energy needed to account for this illusion by simply using tall narrow glasses that will manipulate the illusion to your advantage.

 

8. Eat without distractions.

Watching television or reading a book while eating can create patterns of consumption that are unrelated to how hungry you actually are. When you get into the habit of eating with distractions, performing the distraction initiates consumption and you keep eating until the television episode ends or you reach the end of the magazine. When your attention is directed away from your food, you’re not conscious of what and how much you are consuming, so more often than not, you sit there eating longer than you need to to become full. Avoid creating such correlations by only eating when you’re hungry and by focusing on your food when you eat so that you are more aware of the volume you are eating.

 

I used to eat chips straight out the bag, keep candy on the coffee table, and read during dinner. Though these tips aren’t guaranteed to stop all instances of overconsumption, they can help you develop better habits that make you more aware of your food choices. Over time, I noticed I no longer felt stuffed after every meal or snack and I learned what portion size was appropriate for filling me up. So pick a tip and start there; soon you will notice subtle changes in your own routine and choices. You’ll feel better knowing your body is getting just enough of what it needs.

SOPHIA PENG

Writing 420 Capstone Portfolio
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
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