Eat with your non-dominant hand
Interestingly, in this study even eating with your non-dominant hand seemed to help.
People eat out of habit, a study finds, even when food is stale
(Los Angeles Times)
... An online study in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looking at how certain cues and adjustments can affect our habits used two experiments involving mindless eating...
Those who who were very used to eating popcorn at the movies ate the same percentage of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale, while those who had moderate or weak habits of eating movie popcorn ate considerably less stale popcorn than fresh. Controlling for hunger didn't alter the outcome...
Researchers also tested the habit theory in a different context -- a meeting room. While not in the familiar confines of a movie theater, would people be more aware of the fact that the popcorn was stale?
Here, taste mattered. Everyone ate less stale popcorn compared with fresh regardless of how strong their habit of eating movie popcorn....
In the second experiment, 89 movie-goers were asked to eat popcorn with their dominant or nondominant hand to see if that type of interference would disrupt their habits and alter how much they ate of stale and fresh popcorn. Eating with the nondominant hand caused those with moderate and high popcorn habits to eat less stale than fresh popcorn (those with low popcorn-eating habits ate about the same amount of fresh and stale popcorn, but researchers noted that they ate so slowly it caused a floor effect)...
Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab, believes some easy changes -- switching from larger plates to smaller ones, for example -- could help us eat less without putting too much thought into it.
But in some situations, it may take more drastic measures to make us notice what we're eating. "It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat," Wood said. "More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters to actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat."
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People eat out of habit, a study finds, even when food is stale
(Los Angeles Times)
... An online study in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looking at how certain cues and adjustments can affect our habits used two experiments involving mindless eating...
Those who who were very used to eating popcorn at the movies ate the same percentage of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale, while those who had moderate or weak habits of eating movie popcorn ate considerably less stale popcorn than fresh. Controlling for hunger didn't alter the outcome...
Researchers also tested the habit theory in a different context -- a meeting room. While not in the familiar confines of a movie theater, would people be more aware of the fact that the popcorn was stale?
Here, taste mattered. Everyone ate less stale popcorn compared with fresh regardless of how strong their habit of eating movie popcorn....
In the second experiment, 89 movie-goers were asked to eat popcorn with their dominant or nondominant hand to see if that type of interference would disrupt their habits and alter how much they ate of stale and fresh popcorn. Eating with the nondominant hand caused those with moderate and high popcorn habits to eat less stale than fresh popcorn (those with low popcorn-eating habits ate about the same amount of fresh and stale popcorn, but researchers noted that they ate so slowly it caused a floor effect)...
Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab, believes some easy changes -- switching from larger plates to smaller ones, for example -- could help us eat less without putting too much thought into it.
But in some situations, it may take more drastic measures to make us notice what we're eating. "It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat," Wood said. "More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters to actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat."
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