The University of Illinois researcher has set up several food experiments that show the more people are given, the more they will eat ? regardless of whether they are full or think the food tastes good.
... In the soup experiment, participants come to the lab expecting a taste test. Some bowls are rigged with hidden tubes that keep them full, while others are not.
Over two years of the experiment, students with bottomless bowls tended to eat 40 percent more than test subjects with regular bowls.
"I wasn't aware of it," said Nina Huesgen, one of the students who got a trick bowl in a recent experiment. "That's why I feel so filled up, I guess."
We all knew this intuitively, didn't we? Kudos to the researcher (Brian Wansink) for proving it.
Some might jump to the conclusion that it's only we (allegedly) greedy and spoiled Americans who get such huge portions at home. But my trip last spring to Germany and Italy revealed dishes sagging under the weight of fried meats and potatoes, "personal" pizzas the size of dinner plates and lots and lots (and lots) of pasta. And we shied away from the tourist areas that might presumably cater more to the American appetite. Germans men can have some impressive round beer bellies, and German women can be stocky. But they're not morbidly obese in the classic American sense. Italian men and women -- well, they pretty much all look good.
So what are the key factors here? Absent other information, I'm going to have to blame inactivity, our public spaces' hostility to walking, and bottomless bowls of soup.
Via Rebecca Blood.
I didn't miss the bottomless bowls of soup - it was the thing that attracted my attention to the article in the first place. But by itself it was not the most salient part: the experiment was bad, but the conclusions were pretty believable.
ReplyDeleteI know that other countries are not averse to a nice large dinner as well, but their diet (not a fad one) is qualitatively different, especially the so-called Mediterranean one (Greece, Italy, etc). Plus, at least from my experience, a lot of people living in the cities walk much more than their American counterparts. And I have never, ever seen a European eat a double-double burger while drinking a 96oz Big Gulp full of Coke in one sitting.
One needs only to look at the model of "casual dining" restaraunts to see how this works. Examples:
ReplyDelete1. Olive Garden - Free Unlimited Salad and Breadsticks with a Paid Entree
2. Outback Steakhouse - Free "brown" (read: lots of artificial colors) bread with the purchase of any entree. Certain items on their menu also include a free salad.
Additionally, the introduction of the "bottomless" soda is just as bad (if not worse) than either of the above. I had to inform my brother the other day that after his 5th Coke at dinner that he had used consumed 60 oz. of soda. For the record, that's almost 800 calories and over 120 grams of sugar.
This largely proves one thing - a little self-control can go a long way.