Eat Out Eat Well

eat out eat well

Superbowl: Eating Or Watching Or Both?

By Leave a Comment

Seriously.  Hand to mouth munching on chips, dips, and wings.  A swig or two or three.  A cookie here and there.  And then there’s the “real food” at halftime – or maybe there was pizza first followed by a selection of subs.

By the end of the game do you have a clue about how much – or even what — you have popped into your mouth?

You may – or may not – be riveted to the TV screen rooting hard for your team, but you may also be going along for the ride – happy to be at a party where there’s plenty of food and shouting and enthusiasm – a classic set-up for mindless and distracted eating which is what can happen when there’s no “structured meal,”  a lack planning, and when you give into “head hunger” and “see it and eat it,” as opposed to actual physical hunger.

What Makes Us Eat Too Much?

Hunger doesn’t prompt most of us to overeat. Family, friends, plate size, packaging, lighting, candles, smells, distractions, environments, and feelings all do.    We make about 200+ food related decisions a day – like deciding between pizza or wings; a sandwich or salad; chocolate chip or oatmeal cookie; light beer or diet coke; kitchen table or chair in front of the TV.  That’s about 200+ daily opportunities to be mindful or mindless – and probably a whole lot more when faced with a flow of food and an exciting game.

Food And Football

 

It’s amazing how food has become associated with football — from tailgating to Superbowl parties.  There are plenty of choices for eating deliciously well if you are more mindful than mindless about your selection of food.

Stick with grilled meat, veggies, baked chips rather than fried, plain bread, a pita, or wrap rather than biscuits or cornbread. Go for salsa and skip the guacamole.  Turkey, baked ham, and grilled chicken are better choices than wings and fried chicken.

Examples Of Potential Pitfalls And Some Saving Graces:

Tostada with guacamole:  2 pieces (9.3 oz), 360 calories, 23g fat, 32g carbs, 12g protein

Salsa:  1 tablespoon 4 calories, .04g fat, 1g carbs, .2g protein

Nacho flavored tortilla chips, reduced fat:  1 oz, 126 calories, 4g fat, 20g carbs, 2g protein

Nacho flavored tortilla chips:  1oz, 141 calories, 7g fat, 18g carbs, 1g protein

Potato chips:  1oz, 152 calories, 10g fat, 15g carbs, 2g protein

Potato chips, reduced fat:  1 oz, 134 calories, 6g fat, 19g carbs, 2g protein

Raw baby carrots:  1 medium, 4 calories, 0 fat, .8g carbs, 0 protein

Pizza Hut cheese pizza:  1 slice (1/8 of a 12” medium pan pizza), 240 calories, 10g fat, 27g carbs, 11g protein

Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza:  1 slice (1/8 of a 12” medium pan pizza), 250 calories, 12g fat, 26g carbs, 11g protein

Grilled chicken breast:  one 4.2 oz breast, 180 calories, 4g fate, 0 carbs, 35g protein

KFC Fiery hot Buffalo wing:  one 1oz wing, 80 calories, 5g fat, g carbs, 4g protein

KFC extra crispy drumstick:  one 2oz piece, 150 calories, 6g carbs, 11g protein

Chili (Wendy’s, with saltine crackers):  8 oz, 187 calories, 6g fat, 19g carbs, 14g protein

Wheat bread:  1 slice, .9 oz., 65 calories, 1g fat,, 12g carbs, 2g protein

Italian combo on ciabatta (Panera):  1 sandwich, 1lb. 7 oz, 1050 calories, 47g fat, 94g carbs, 61g protein

Subway 6g of fat or less turkey breast & ham on wheat sandwich:  8.3oz, 296 calories, 4g fat, 48g carbs, 19g protein

Chocolate chip cookie:  2-1/4” from refrigerated dough. 59 calories, 3g fat, 8g carbs, 0.6g protein

Chocolate ice cream, Cold Stone Creamery:   5oz (like it), 326 calories, 20g fat, 33g carbs, 5g protein

Apple:  medium, 95 calories, .4g fat, 25g carbs, .5g protein

What’s on your menu?

GO GIANTS!

Remember to visit and Like MyFoodMAPs on Facebook.

 

 

Do Restaurant Menus Influence What You Order?

By Leave a Comment

As you sit down at your table, the waiter hands you your menu.  You scan the pages with your eyes darting here and there. Where do they land?

Menus are one way a restaurant attempts to build trust with you and if the menu you’re looking at has a well thought out design, psychology is playing a major role.

The Menu Is Part Of The Brand

A restaurant’s menu is part of its brand and how it looks sends out subtle signals to the customer. A dirty menu may send a message that the kitchen is dirty. A bright, clean, well-designed menu probably means a clean, well-designed operation.

Menu design affects the bottom line, too. Thoughtful menu redesign can improve sales by an average of 2 to 10% — by subtly directing customers to order higher profit margin items.

Is It Your Decision What To Order?

Customers don’t really decide — on their own — what to order. If done right (from the restaurant’s point of view), a menu should lead customers to what the restaurant wants them to order. The trick is where the menu items are placed, the graphics, and the descriptions. For a four-page menu (including the front and back covers) the “position of power ” is above the center on the inside right page.

A menu item’s position on a list also affects sales. Human tendency is to remember the top two and the bottom item on a list. High profit margin and high appeal items get high profile spots.  Logic plays a role, too, like putting appetizers in the top left panel — a high-profile position the eyes get to first since appetizers are usually the first things people eat.

The font, the print size, boxes, and shading all help draw attention to an item. Menus need to be graphically exciting, but people have to be able to read them. Things like borders, illustrations, symbols and bold type also focus attention.

Although the same item may sell differently when it’s put in a different spot on the menu, servers play a major role in determining what customers ultimately order. A well-designed menu helps to steer people in the direction the restaurant wants them to go but it’s the servers who close the deal.


The Importance Of Words

Some words have more selling power than others.  “Roasted” or “cooked in our wood-fire oven” are more attractive than “fried.”  If the item actually is fried, describing it as hand-battered, which tells customers the item is fried without saying it’s fried, sounds better.  Making the descriptions of high-profit, high-quality items more appealing than others directs customers to them.

There’s most likely a continuum of appeal. What the restaurant really wants to sell should sound as delicious as possible. The other items should sound good and taste good —just not as good as the signature dishes.

Where Do The Numbers Go?

There’s an art behind the placement of prices on the menu and that placement is critical. Aligning prices in a straight column on the right leads customers to “shop-by-price” because despite mouth-watering descriptions, the eye tends to go straight to the prices.

Customers are savvy and listing menu items with the prices from most expensive to least expensive is something they quickly figure out. Experts recommend positioning the item’s price at the end of the description, in the same type and boldness, and without a dollar sign (even the dollar sign makes the customer a little more aware of the price) — an approach that helps the customer focus on the product rather than the price.

 

 

 

Do You Believe You Make About 200 Food Decisions Every Day?

By Leave a Comment

Do you ever think about how many daily food decisions you make or how your environment influences those decisions?

The Cornell Food and Brand Lab, directed by Dr. Brian Wansink, did some studies that showed that people grossly underestimate how many daily food related decisions they make – not by a little but by an average of more than 221 decisions.

And, most people are also either unaware of how their environment influences their decisions — or they’re unwilling to acknowledge it.

Who, What, Where, When, And How Much

In one study the Food and Brand Lab asked 139 people to estimate how many decisions they make about food and beverages during one day. Then they were specifically asked how many “who, what, where, when, and how much” decisions they made for a typical snack, beverage, and meal – and how many meals, snacks, and beverages they ate during a typical date.

14.4 VS. 226.7 Decisions

The researchers then created an index to help them estimate the number of total decisions made daily. On average, people guessed they made 14.4 food related decisions each day. Amazingly, the researchers estimated that the average person in the study made 226.7 food related decisions each day. Obese people who participated in the study made 100+ more food related decisions than overweight people.

Larger Packages, Bowls, And Plates

A second study of 379 people analyzed the effect of environmental factors like package size, serving bowl size, and plate size on how much they ate. Half of the people were assigned to what was called “exaggerated treatment” – they had larger packages, bowls, and plates than the other half of the people in the study. On average, 73% of the people who received “exaggerated treatment” thought they ate as much as they normally would – except they actually ate 31% more than the people who ate from the regular size packages, plates, and bowls.

When they were told how much more they ate and then were asked why they thought they might have eaten more:

  • 8% admitted they might have eaten more
  • 21% said they didn’t eat more
  • 69% said that if they did eat more it was because they were hungry
  • Only 4% believed they had eaten more because of the larger sizes that acted as environmental cues.

Bottom Line

We make, on average, 200+ food related decisions each day and those decisions are heavily influenced by environmental factors like the size of food packaging and the bowls and plates we use for our food.

For additional information: Wansink, Brian and Jeffrey Sobal (2007), “Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook,” Environment and Behavior 39:1, 106-123.

Celebrating The New Year In Good Eating Style

By Leave a Comment

The earliest recorded celebration of the arrival of the new year dates back 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon.  The first new moon following the vernal equinox, or the day in the spring with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness, signaled the start of a new year.

Today, New Year’s Day–the first day of the calendar year–is celebrated in almost every country in the world, but depending the type of calendar, not all countries or cultures welcome the New Year on January 1st. The Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, Roman, and Mohammedan years all have different start dates.

January 1 was recognized as New Years Day in the 1500’s with the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582 most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar but the British didn’t adopt it until 1752. Until then the British Empire and their American colonies celebrated the new year in March.

Some Traditions and Legends

  • In ancient Rome the first day of the New Year honored Janus, the god of gates, doors, beginnings and endings. Janus had two faces.  One looked ahead to see what the new year would bring and the other looked backward to see what had happened during the past year. To celebrate, the Romans gave gifts to friends and family members –and sometimes to Senators in exchange for favors.
  • Druid priests In England celebrated the New Year on March 10. They gave branches of mistletoe to people for charms. Later on, English people cleaned their chimneys on New Year’s Day believing that this brought good luck to the household for the coming year (which is where the expression “cleaning the slate” comes from).
  • In many countries people eat specific foods to bring good luck for the coming year.  In Spain they eat grapes, round fruits in the Philippines, suckling pig in Austria, soba noodles in Japan, rice pudding in Norway, black-eyed peas in the southern US, and cake with a hidden coin in Greece.  Other common worldwide customs are making resolutions–which dates to the Babylonians, and watching fireworks.
  • Chinese New Year, an all East and Southeast Asia celebration, is known as “Spring Festival” in China. Filled with tradition and ritual it’s usually considered the most important traditional holiday for Chinese around the world.  It begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and is celebrated with lucky red envelopes filled with money, lion and dragon dances, drums, fireworks, firecrackers.  Traditional sweet sticky the last course rice cakes and round savory dumplings symbolize never-ending wealth. On New Year’s Eve the meal includes fish to symbolize abundance. In the first five days of the New Year people eat long noodles to symbolize long life and round dumplings shaped like the full moon to represent the family unit and perfection.

Some New Year’s Eve Tips

If you have big plans for New Year’s Eve, enjoy yourself by devising an eating strategy before you go out and committing to carrying it out.  If you’re watching your weight, have a plan – you can still enjoy yourself and not feel deprived. With a plan you design just for you, you’ll have a much better chance at succeeding – and not end up hating yourself and cursing the scale on the first day of the New Year.  Here are some ideas:

  • If you’re going to a party with lots of hors d’oeuvres decide beforehand how many you’ll have.  Three varieties, one of each?  Two varieties, two of each?
  • Alternate your drink of choice – wine, champagne, liquor – with sparkling water to cut calories, help with sobriety, and make it easier for you to resist food temptations.  Hold that glass of sparkling water or diet soda in your hand – the only people who will know it’s non-alcoholic is you and the bartender (who most likely could care less about what you are drinking).
  • If you’re going to dinner decide if you’re going to have dessert ahead of time.  If you are going to indulge – even if it’s the house specialty smothered in whipped cream — compensate by having a salad with dressing on the side as your appetizer.  Nix the bread.  Just balance your caloric intake the best you can.
  • If it’s a pizza, wings, and beer affair think about ways to minimize your fat intake – pizza and wings (especially the dip) are loaded.  Cut the pizza slice in half – leave the other half in the box.  When you go back for seconds, retrieve the other half slice. You’ll end up eating just one slice but  feel like you’re having two.  If you can, take off some of the cheese – the main source of fat.  Some people use paper towels or napkins to absorb some of the extra fat floating on the surface of a slice.  Up to you – but it really cuts down on calories – mopping up the equivalent of two teaspoons of oil knocks off just under 100 calories.

How Far You’d Need To Walk to Burn Off A New Year’s Party Calories

If you go to a New Year’s party and have:

  • one Irish coffee
  • one glass of wine
  • one cup of coffee with cream and sugar
  • one cup of eggnog
  • one 3 oz Stinger
  • 5 large olives
  • half a cup of mixed nuts
  • one oz of potato or tortilla chips
  • one teaspoon of chip dip, a mini-quiche
  • 2 oz of boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce
  • two chocolate mints
  • one slice of pecan pie with  half a cup of ice cream
  • one small piece of fudge
  • one iced gingerbread cookie

you would have consumed 27030 calories and you would need to walk 27.03 miles, or 54060 steps (assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps) to burn off those calories.

 

Holiday Party Food Calories: How Far You’d Have To Walk To Burn Them Off

By Leave a Comment

It’s holiday time and there’s lots of food around. Check out the calorie count and the distance you’d have to walk to burn off those calories if you have:

  • One mixed drink
  • One cup of coffee with cream and sugar
  • One glass of cider or juice
  • One cup of eggnog
  • 10 Wheat Thins
  • 2 tablespoons of cheese ball
  • one mini-quiche
  • 2 oz. boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce
  • 2 oz. Swedish meatballs
  • one slice of pumpkin pie
  • one slice of fruitcake
  • one snickerdoodle cookie
  • one iced gingerbread cookie
  • one piece of divinity

You would have eaten 2039 calories. You’d need to walk 20.39 miles, 32.88 kilometers, or 40780 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps to burn them off. Calculations from walking.about.com.