In the NY Times last week, professor Brian Wansink talked about some of his research on how people have relatively little concept of what they're eating and usually take visual cues from outside sources, rather than from their own bodies about fullness. He mentioned a test that involved giving participants stale and fresh popcorn in different-sized containers that showed people would eat more from the larger container - even if that was the stale popcorn. That is not the only experiment that he and his colleagues did to support their position, however. They have a whole repertoire of experiments that demonstrate the same results. The tests answered these questions:

• Do even educated eaters fall prey to mindless eating based on container size?
• Does a food or a wine label affect how people feel about their meal and how much they eat?
• How hard is it to correctly estimate portion size based on container size, and how can the shape of a container make you consume more?
• Does how food is described change consumption rates?
• Do visual clues help slow down mindless snacking?

The answer is "yes" to each of these questions and they way they got to that answer in each case was interesting. Re-naming peas as "power peas" got kids to eat more. Educated eaters still binged when given oversized bowls and color-coding chips so people could see exactly how much they were eating helped them to eat less. The tests don't necessarily tell us anything new, but it's always interesting to see how people react in these different situations anyway. In fact, it's sort of tempting to try them out on coworkers in the break room or, if you have a child that needs to do a science project, questions like these could be a good starting point.