Yahoo Lifestyle Portion-control tricks
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Fool yourself into eating less by downsizing your table setting
Kids are told to clean their plate at every meal, so it’s no wonder they grow into adults who feel compelled to polish off whatever’s in front of them. Breaking that habit can be next to impossible – but there are ways around it.
Switch your plates, cutlery – even centrepieces (seriously) – and you can polish off every last morsel without having to let out your entire wardrobe.
CENTREPIECES
Swap flowers for a bowl of green apples, bananas or after-dinner mints. Studies at the Smell & Taste Foundation in Chicago, US, found that obese and overweight people who whiffed one of those scents before meals lost an average of 27kg over six months.
CANDLES
Skip them, or blow them out after the salad course. When lighting is dim, people linger over food, which can lead to overeating, says Dr Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab.
WALLS
Paint them blue, or buy a blue lightbulb to dine under – it’s thought to suppress appetite. In a study published in US interior design magazine Contract, diners in a blue room ate 33 per cent less than those in a yellow or red room.
“Blue lights make food look less appealing; warmer colours, especially yellow, have the opposite effect,” says Dr Val Jones, president and CEO of Get Better Health.
SERVING DISHES
In studies, people ate up to 56 per cent more when they served themselves from a 3.8-litre bowl than from a 2-litre one.
So use smaller serving bowls and go for ceramic over glass: one study in the International Journal of Obesity found that women ate 71 per cent more out of transparent containers than they did out of dishes they couldn’t see through.
GLASSES
According to the Journal of Consumer Research, adults pour about 19 per cent more liquid into short, wide glasses than they do into tall tumblers. This may be because our brains tend to focus more on an object’s height than its width, so short glasses don’t appear as full. Stick with tall glasses for juice, soft drink and alcohol; go shorter for water.
PLATES
Keep them saucer-size (about 15cm in diameter). It might feel very Alice in Wonderland, but in a study by Cornell University in the US, people who ate hamburgers served on saucers believed they were eating an average of 18 per cent more kilojoules than they really were. People who ate from dishes 30cm in diameter, on the other hand, had no such delusion.
BOWLS
Research shows the bigger the bowl, the more you’ll stuff into it. So stick with small ones, or use a teacup or mug for foods you tend to gulp down, like cereal and ice-cream. Save the giant bowls for salad and broth-based soups so you can fill up on fewer kilojoules.
SPOONS
Use teaspoons, even to load up your plate. Another Cornell study found that people who used 90ml serving spoons (equal to six tablespoons) shovelled out 15 per cent more food than those who used smaller utensils equal to four tablespoons (45ml).
