Great Article from Listener on the Power of Portions

October 11, 2006

Seduced by Snacks? No, Not You

By KIM SEVERSON
Ithaca, N.Y.

PEOPLE almost always think they are too smart for Prof. Brian Wansink’s
quirky experiments in the psychology of overindulgence.

When it comes to the slippery issues of snacking and portion control, no
one thinks he or she is the schmo who digs deep into the snack bowl
without thinking, or orders dessert just because a restaurant plays a
certain kind of music.

“To a person, people will swear they aren’t influenced by the size of a
package or how much variety there is on a buffet or the fancy name on a
can of beans, but they are,” Dr. Wansink said. “Every time.”

He has the data to prove it. Dr. Wansink, who holds a doctorate in
marketing from Stanford University and directs the Cornell University
Food
and Brand Lab, probably knows more about why we put things in our mouths
than anybody else. His experiments examine the cues that make us eat the
way we do. The size of an ice cream scoop, the way something is packaged
and whom we sit next to all influence how much we eat. His research
doesn’t pave a clear path out of the obesity epidemic, but it does show
the significant effect one’s eating environment has on slow and steady
weight gain.

In an eight-seat lab designed to look like a cozy kitchen, Dr. Wansink
offers free lunches in exchange for hard data. He opened the lab at
Cornell in April, after he moved it from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, where he spent eight years conducting experiments in
cafeterias, grocery stores and movie theaters. Dr. Wansink presents his
work to dieticians, food executives and medical professionals. They
use it
to get people to eat differently.

His research on how package size accelerates consumption led, in a
roundabout way, to the popular 100-calorie bags of versions of Wheat
Thins
and Oreos, which are promoted for weight management. Although food
companies have long used packaging and marketing techniques to get
people
to buy more food, Dr. Wansink predicts companies will increasingly use
some of his research to help people eat less or eat better, even if it
means not selling as much food. He reasons that companies will make
up the
difference by charging more for new packaging that might slow down
consumption or that put seemingly healthful twists on existing
brands. And
they get to wear a halo for appearing to do their part to prevent
obesity.

To his mind, the 65 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese got
that way, in part, because they didn’t realize how much they were
eating.

“We don’t have any idea what the normal amount to eat is, so we look
around for clues or signals,” he said. “When all you see is that big
portions of food cost less than small ones, it can be confusing.”

Although people think they make 15 food decisions a day on average, his
research shows the number is well over 200. Some are obvious, some are
subtle. The bigger the plate, the larger the spoon, the deeper the bag,
the more we eat. But sometimes we decide how much to eat based on how
much
the person next to us is eating, sometimes moderating our intake by more
than 20 percent up or down to match our dining companion.

Much of his work is outlined in the book “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat
More
Than We Think” (Bantam), which will be published on Tuesday. The book is
his fourth over all, but his first directed at a general audience. It is
peppered with his goofy, appealing Midwestern humor and practical diet
tips. But the most fascinating material is directly from his studies on
university campuses and in test kitchens for institutions like the
United
States Army.

An appalling example of our mindless approach to eating involved an
experiment with tubs of five-day-old popcorn. Moviegoers in a Chicago
suburb were given free stale popcorn, some in medium-size buckets,
some in
large buckets. What was left in the buckets was weighed at the end of
the
movie. The people with larger buckets ate 53 percent more than people
with
smaller buckets. And people didn’t eat the popcorn because they liked
it,
he said. They were driven by hidden persuaders: the distraction of the
movie, the sound of other people eating popcorn and the Pavlovian
popcorn
trigger that is activated when we step into a movie theater.

Dr. Wansink is particularly proud of his bottomless soup bowl, which he
and some undergraduates devised with insulated tubing, plastic
dinnerware
and a pot of hot tomato soup rigged to keep the bowl about half full.
The
idea was to test which would make people stop eating: visual cues, or a
feeling of fullness.

People using normal soup bowls ate about nine ounces. The typical
bottomless soup bowl diner ate 15 ounces. Some of those ate more than a
quart, and didn’t stop until the 20-minute experiment was over. When
asked
to estimate how many calories they had consumed, both groups thought
they
had eaten about the same amount, and 113 fewer calories on average than
they actually had.

Last week in his lab seven people were finishing lunch while watching a
big-screen TV. Cartoons on the TV served as a distraction so
participants
would not be influenced by what and how much those nearby ate.

Because he does not take money from food companies and is a newcomer at
the university, the lab runs on the cheap. The menus, like the one on
this
day, are often built from Beefaroni, applesauce, M&M’s and Chex Mix:
simple, inexpensive food that subjects are familiar with and that can be
easily manipulated.

He prefers to experiment on graduate students or office workers, whom he
sometimes lures with the promise of a drawing for an iPod. “It’s easy to
find undergraduates to participate, but with the guys nothing makes
sense
because they all eat like animals,” he said.

On this day he is testing how much people eat depending on whether they
have exercised. Over the past several weeks they have sent subjects,
some
who have exercised and some who have not, through an unlimited buffet
line. By measuring the difference between how much and what people eat
depending on whether they have exercised, Dr. Wansink hopes to prove
that
even moderate exercise makes us think we are entitled to many more
calories than we actually burned.

“Geez Louise, you can’t believe how much people eat to
overcompensate,” he
said.

Those kinds of things — intuitive bits we know about food but think
we are
either immune to or don’t think about — are the spine of “Mindless
Eating.” In it he outlines an eating plan based on simple awareness.
Employ a few tricks and you can take in 100 to 300 fewer calories a day.
At the end of a year you could be 10 to 30 pounds lighter.

For example, sit next to the person you think will be the slowest eater
when you go to a restaurant, and be the last one to start eating. Plate
high-calorie foods in the kitchen but serve vegetables family style.
Never
eat directly from a package. Wrap tempting food in foil so you don’t see
it. At a buffet put only two items on your plate at a time.

His dieting methods aren’t as fast as the Atkins plan or even Weight
Watchers, and have little to do with matters that consume nutrition
researchers or even culinarians. Dr. Wansink is not that guy.
Although he
has studied to be a sommelier and keeps a mental list of his 100 best
meals, he drinks vats of Diet Coke and will inhale a box of Burger King
Cini-mini rolls with no apologies. He doesn’t think that his work will
solve the obesity problem, but it’s a start.

“It’s like a big pyramid,” he said. “The people at 30,000 feet can look
down and say we need a wholesale change in our food system, in school
lunches, in the way we farm.” At the bottom of the pyramid, he said, are
the nutritionists and the diet fanatics who think the problem will be
solved by examining every nutrient and calorie.

Dr. Wansink does his research for the person in the middle, the guy
on the
sofa who can appreciate a good meal, whether it is from Le Bernardin
or Le
Burger King.

“Will being more mindful about how we eat make everyone 100 pounds
lighter
next year?” he said. “No, but it might make them 10 pounds lighter.”

And the best part, he promises, is that you won’t even notic

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