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Fooling The Eyes With Portion SIze

shrkntz said: "That is neat. It makes sence conserning whatever is dished on a plate and given to us, makes it hard to not finish what is on the plate. I heard that having darker colored dishes helps too. I have both, dark and smaller plates now for myself. Why have a huge plate loaded, it hurts after you finish it all and it makes you sleepy."

Heather said: "I do that from time to time. I think that my stomach must be shrinking anyway, because a salad before dinner almost fills me up anyhow. Thanks for sharing that article!"

UniqueMystique said: "Got to Clean Your Plate? Use Smaller Dishes By Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 April 4, 2005 -- The eyes may be the window to the soul, but they're apparently lousy at gauging portion size, hunger, and fullness. The eyes can nudge diners to keep on eating until they've polished off every morsel on their plate, according to a recent study in Obesity Research. "It seems that people use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs," write researchers. That can send your calorie count into orbit, if the plate is big. And big plates are common. Just look at the piled-high, Frisbee-sized plates used in many restaurants. Food package sizes and portions have steadily increased for 30 years, write the researchers. But the eyes can also be fooled in your favor. Just use smaller plates and split jumbo-sized snacks into little bags or containers, the researchers suggest. Think kid-sized, not supersized. The Bottomless Soup Bowl A sneaky experiment showed that the eyes and stomach aren't always in sync. Researchers fed soup to 54 adult volunteers, telling them they were testing a new recipe. Participants were told to eat as much of the soup as they wanted. Secretly, some of the diners had bowls that filled themselves back up. Tubes hooked those bowls to a vat of soup, subtly piping in more soup to prevent the bowls from emptying. The diners didn't notice that. Those with the self-filling bowls ate 73% more than participants with normal bowls. But they had no idea they'd eaten so much. "They did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated (full) than those eating from normal bowls," write the researchers. The volunteers with the bottomless soup bowls underestimated how many calories they'd eaten by 140 calories. The other participants -- who had to call a waiter over for a refill -- were only off by about 32 calories. Plus, those with self-filling bowls ate an average of 113 more calories. They were no more likely to agree with the statements, "If other people keep eating, I am more likely to also," or "Eating with other people distracted me from how much I was eating." That could mean that visual cues can override actual hunger. It was harder to push the soup bowl away when it never emptied. Calories and the 'Clean Plate' Club More than half (54%) of American adults generally claim they eat until they "clean their plates," write the researchers, who included Jill North of the food science and human nutrition department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If that's you, why fight such an ingrained practice? Use a petite plate instead, and downsize portions ruthlessly. If you're in a restaurant, why not ladle some of your food into a take-home container before you start eating, or shift a smaller amount onto your salad plate? Your eyes may not know the difference, but your waistline could."

Qian said: "very cool, I've heard of that before, sounds like i'll need to try it now. :)"