4. You Eat At A Crowded Table
Your mistake: You habitually dine with large groups. Imagine that you, a careful eater, go out for pizza with friends. Statistically speaking, here's what will happen, reports Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, in his book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Dining with just one friend, you'll eat about 35 percent more than when alone; with a group of four, about 75 percent more; and in groups of seven or more, 96 percent more. The reasons for overeating: spending a longer time at the table, mimicking our companions' pace often bite-for-bite, (especially in the beginning of a meal) and defaulting to the group average.
The lesson: "Sit next to slow eaters," Wansink writes. "They can help you pace your eating, not the speed eaters who eat like they grew up in a family of 12."
5. You Saved a Bunch of Money
Your mistake: Looking at ready-to-eat multipacks makes you overindulge. Stockpiled food is consumed twice as fast as other food in the house, concluded Wansink and his colleagues after an experiment in which they supplied families with either large or small multipacks of food. (Think Warholian spreads of either 24 or 8 soup cans.) The problem is simple: Bulky packages consume too much kitchen real estate; we see them every time we open the cupboard, for instance. Visibility translates into impulsivity, and, before we know it, we're eating more than we intended.
The lesson: Out of sight, out of mind. Move multi-unit packs of food out of the kitchen and into the basement, freezer, underground bunker...wherever that cluster of bright labels won't catch your eye. Wansink found that the feeding frenzy was worse in the first eight days that new multipacks are the house. After that, people became less attracted to the food, despite a still-ample supply, and ate about the same amount as they did of less-stockpiled pantry items.
Info thanks to the Huffington Post.
Have a healthy and productive day!
MJ
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