Hidden Cues; Are your Eyes Really Bigger than your Stomach?

I don’t want you to think I’m a big health-nut or anything, but I stumbled upon an interesting website a week or so ago as I was searching for something else. As I am now 21, and my body begins to slow down its extremely high rate of metabolism, I may become more interested in this field in the near future.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15579093/

This link offers useful information as to how our mind gives us cues what to eat, and how much to eat. Professor Wansink of Cornell University is making an effort to explain why people eat what they eat. They give a concrete example of this: If there is an assorted color of M&Ms in a dish, people are more likely to grab a larger handful than if there are a couple or only one color.

He also used an interesting experiment where he made a self-filling soup bowl. In this experiment, as the test subject ate soup, the bowl would fill itself to the same level as they consumed out of it. The funny part is that some people ate up to a quart of soup! This shows how sometimes we will eat more if the food is on a larger plate, or if it does not disappear before our eyes. The saying “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach” just may have more meaning than we previously thought.

Wansink advises using more than just habitual, learned cues to limit what you eat. He says that it matters not to count carbs as much as it matters to simply be aware of why you are eating what you are eating. This can be useful to companies serving meals at restaurants, trying to make a profit. If you can get the customer to think they got a good deal, then you may have better luck doing business and bringing them in next time. I hope this provides some useful information for our marketing majors of the class, and possibly even to those trying to change their dietary standards, like myself.