Do you know just how much food you chow down on each day? Chances are you don’t. And that can get you into deep calorie balance trouble.  
 
According to Dr. Brian Wansink, a former professor of marketing at Cornell University and now the Executive Director of Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you make several hundred different decisions about food – each day! But most decisions are mindless ones. That is, your food environment – the packaging, placement, and promotion of foods – guides how much you put into your mouth. For example, Dr. Wansink’s research has shown that people will eat:

• more when eating out of larger packages. You’re likely to finish the whole container of soda whether it is a 12-ounce can or a 20-ounce bottle. There’s a difference of 100 calories between the two.
• more when the visual cues of food being eaten are removed. Wansink had participants in one study eat chicken wings while watching a sports event on TV. The subjects ate more wings when the leftover wing bones were taken away periodically by the wait staff than when the bones stayed in a bowl on the table.
• less when food is harder to access. In one study, moving a dish of chocolate candies from a person’s desktop to just six feet away led to a significant reduction in number of candies – and calories – eaten.
• less when using smaller plates and beverage glasses. 

Here’s living proof of the latter point. A participant in one of our personal training workshops stated that on the Navy base where he worked, the galley (that’s cafeteria to us civilians) started serving smaller portions in an effort to help patrons balance their calories better. There was nearly a mutiny as active duty sailors and civilians complained profusely that they were getting gypped. The galley staff switched to serving the smaller portions on smaller plates. The customers’ complaints subsided because they thought they were once again getting the larger portion. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.
 
To combat mindless eating,

• Let physical hunger, not food proximity, be your eating trigger.
• Focus on the food.  Don’t read, watch TV, drive, or otherwise be distracted when you are eating.
• Use your grandma’s china.  In the last few generations, plates have grown from the 10 inches to 12 inches in diameter.

We’ll discuss mindless eating and Dr. Wansink’s work in future blogs and articles. In the meantime, how do you stay mindful about how much you eat?