Resturant Tricks to Get Us to Eat More

Over eating is one of the ways to break your diet program.  Eating out you may just find that your favorite restaurant is working against your own self control.   There is a science that restaurants use to trick you into eating more than you really want.

Cornell University researcher food psychologist Brian Wansink has researched the science of restaurant reflexes.  The results may just surprise you.

First - Watch how many categories you order from the start.  The wine list, the appetizer, the main course, the side item and the deserts can really cause you to over eat and not realize it till too late.  He suggests that once you have picked your main course that you only order from 2 of the categories, such as an appetizer and a cocktail or a roll and desert.

Second - Unnatural lighting makes us less aware of how  much we are eating. The lights are dimmed in order to have you stay longer and have that extra glass of wine or the desert.  Brightly lit restaurant dinners tend to eat their food very fast getting full before they know it. His suggestion is to take a full 20 minutes to enjoy your meal no matter what type of restaurant.  It takes your body that much time to register your are full.

Third - Dinning with a partner may cause us to eat 35% more than dinning alone.  Former Georgia State university psychologist John De Castro found that eating with 3 increased the number 75%.  Wansink thinks this may just be etiquette, in not wanting to the first one done eating.  He suggest that you start after the others and reserve a few bits to have at the end and avoid being finished first.

Fourth - What you food is served on will make a difference in how much you will eat.  Fancy china verse paper plates have an effect on us.  It is believed that we will eat 90% of the food in front of us, no matter what size the serving dish is.  You may want to ask for half portion or share and entree or ask for that to-go box.

Fifth -  A cleaned off table can deceive you on how much you have eaten.  Brian Wansink used volunteers to see how this worked. They were invited to have all the chicken wings they wanted.  Some of the tables were cleared of the eaten food and some were not.  He found that the cleared table eaters ate 28% more than the not cleared tables.  As your dishes are cleared try to make a mental tally of all your courses to avoid overeating.

Lastly - Did you know that even the name of the items on a menu have an effect on what we order?  The term "homemade" will have you ordering something before a more generic term.


Daniel Silver