Beware of Subtle Eating Cues

What do your place mats, wall color, compact disc player, and remote control have to do with how much you eat? Quite a bit. Here are some simple changes that you can make in your eating environment that will help you to eat less—without even thinking about it.

Set a dark table. Bright colors such as orange, red, and yellow will make you hungry, according to research at the health, weight, and stress clinic at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. But darker colors such as gray, black, or brown won’t, says Maria Simonson, Ph.D.,Sc.D., professor emeritus and director of the clinic. Although your kitchen won’t look as warm and festive with a dark tablecloth, dark napkins, or dark walls, they could help your weight-loss efforts, she says.

Eat from small packages. If a food comes in a large package, you will most likely use more of it, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Researchers there tested how people use different-size bottles, boxes, and bags of cooking oil, spaghetti, and M&M’s, among other foods. The researchers suspect that we may consume more food from a larger package for three reasons. One, we perceive the food as less expensive. Second, we don’t have to worry about running out. And third, we may try to use up the whole box just to keep the darn thing from taking up so much cabinet space. The moral is that the smaller the bottles of cooking oil, packages of sweets, and boxes of food you buy, the less you’ll have to eat during each sitting.

Munch to Mozart, not syndicated sitcoms. Listening to gentle music while you dine forces you to concentrate on what you are eating, which means you’ll eat more slowly and eat less. You’ll also be more satisfied with what you eat because slowing down allows you to taste it. On the other hand, if you eat while watching television, eating becomes automatic, so you eat more.

Channel-surf away the commercials. Eating or drinking while watching television is dangerous to begin with. But be extra careful if a diet commercial pops up on the screen. In fact, flip to another station. In one study, 86 women dieters drank a milkshake and then watched a sad movie with either no commercials, neutral commercials, or ones featuring successful dieters. All of the women were supposed to test bowls of peanuts and M&M during the flick. The women who saw the diet commercials ate nearly twice as much as the other women. Researchers suspect that the thin women in the ads reminded the women who watched that they had gone off their diets, which removed their inhibitions about eating.