Use smaller tableware to help eat less and lose weight

by Sarah J. Gim, Posted Jul 30th 2006 @ 11:32AM

ice cream bowl According to a new study done by by researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, the size of bowls, spoons and other tableware influences how much people eat.

The study involved 85 food and nutrition experts at an ice-cream social. Each guest received either a smaller 17-ounce or a larger 34-ounce bowls and either two-ounce or three-ounce serving scoops. The participants were allowed to scoop ice cream themselves. Participants with the doubled-size bowl took more ice cream by 31 percent. "We also saw that giving people a scoop that was a little bit larger increased things by about 14.5 percent," said Brian Wansink, director of Cornell's Food and Brand Lab, said in a prepared statement.

Isn't this just common sense?!?!

Filed Under: Health & Medical, How To
Tags: america, dessert, east coast, north america

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-30-2006 @3:03PM Marc said... Seems like common sense, but still valuable to quantify the effect with careful experiments, so as to understand which effects are most important.

This study reminds me of one with a similar focus on visual cues.

"The researchers served a free soup lunch to 54 adults, half of whom ate from normal 18-ounce soup bowls, while the other half ate from identical bowls that, unbeknownst to the participants, were slowly refilled through tubing connected to out-of-sight soup cauldrons.

"Those who ate out of the refilling bowls consumed 73 percent more soup than did participants who ate from the normal soup bowl during the 20-minute lunch.

"Although they averaged 113 more calories than those eating from normal bowls, those eating from the bottomless bowls believed they consumed the same number of calories as the other participants and rated themselves as being no more full.

" “People use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs,” lead researcher Brian Wansink, professor of marketing and of nutritional science at Illinois, said. “This can be dangerous to our diets.” "

link: http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/05/0324soup.html
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