Proper party portioning

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Jan 31st 2006 @ 4:21PM

As Super Bowl Sunday rolls around and some of you get ready to have people over for drinking and snacking, a pre-new-year's-eve post of mine comes to mind. Some of you may remember a recent study from Cornell University professor and "food psychologist" Brian Wansink, where we learned that glass size affects how much people pour. Short, wide glasses resulted in people (even trained bartenders) pouring more liquor than with tall, thin glasses.

Another Wansink-led study last year focused on snacking and bowl size. As you can imagine, people tended to eat lots more, 56 percent more, when they were plucking Chex mix from big bowls rather than small ones. In that study, the extra snacking broke down to 142 calories more per person.

Obviously, if your beer is coming from a can or a bottle, everyone will probably have their own, and if you have a keg, a red plastic cup is probably in order. But, if your guests are mixing drinks, the glass size is good to keep in mind. And, if you've got limited amounts of snackage, small bowls could be in order.

Filed Under: Science
Tags: bowls, drinks, glasses, parties, portion size, pouring, snacking, super bowl, SuperBowl