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

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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.

Other People May Make You Eat More

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Reservations for eight? You might eat 96% more! No kidding.  We tend to continue eating for a longer period of time when we’re with people compared to when we eat alone.  Maybe it’s because we mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, or the good manners we learned in fifth grade, or because we’re just having fun and enjoying great food. We do tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others and the longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Friends and family also influence how much you eat. Sometimes you can get so involved in conversation that all the monitoring of what pops into your mouth goes out the window.  Have you ever looked down at your plate and wondered where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink.  Those calories count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions. They eat fast, you eat fast.  They eat a lot, you eat a lot.  Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

How Much More?

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase how much you eat when you eat with others.  Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

  • 35% more if you eat with one other person
  • 75% more with four at the table
  • 96% more with a group of seven or more

Why?

The pattern of eating more when we’re in larger groups than when we’re eating alone is common in adults. One reason is a phenomenon called “social facilitation,” or the actions that stem from the stimuli coming from the sight and sound of other people doing the same that that you’re doing. When you’re eating in groups, social facilitation can help override the brain’s normal signals of satiety.

Some Helpful Tips:

  • Think about who you are eating with – and why.  If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.
  • If you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with your salad (dressing on the side, please) friends rather than the pepperoni pizza group.
  • You tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you’re trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

What Triggers Your Overeating?

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“No, no, no, I’m not hungry,” you say to yourself – and, five minutes later you have a lap full of crumbs and a powdered sugar mustache.

Sound familiar?  Why, oh why, does this happen?  What’s with the loss of control over eating?

According to David Kessler, MD (The End of Overeating), 50% of obese people, 30% of overweight people, and 20% of healthy weight people say they have a loss of control over eating.

Eating Triggers:  Starting a course of events

A trigger is something that sets a course of events in motion, like overeating.

Eating triggers generally fall into three separate categories: food, feelings, and the environment.

Trigger Food

  • a specific food that sets off a course of overeating where you lose control and eat an excessive amount
  • usually a combo of sugar and fat – like brownies or gooey cookies – or a combo of fat and salt – have you downed your popcorn in the movies, lately?
  • Don’t confuse your food triggers with your favorite foods (the ones that you really like), your comfort foods (ones that you link to home and happiness), or food cravings (when you want a food you haven’t had in a while)
  • a true food trigger is the actual food, not a feeling or place that triggers the out of control eating – think:  an open bag of chips – bet you can’t eat just one regardless of where you are eating or how you are feeling

Trigger Feeling

  • an emotion, good or bad, that causes you to overeat
  • anxiety and sadness are common triggers
  • food triggers prompt overeating of a specific food;  general out of control overeating — the kind where food is often shoved in the mouth as quickly as possible in large quantities – can be precipitated by an emotional trigger

Trigger Environment

  • a specific situation or place that starts a period of overeating
  • common examples might be walking into a movie theater (popcorn), going to a buffet restaurant (one or two helpings of everything), attending a sporting event (how many hot dogs?) or visiting a relative (cookies, pie, and cake?)

Eating Triggers Are All Around You

Bottom Line – eating triggers are commonplace. When you bump up against some of yours, recognize them for what they are and have a strategies to deal with them. 

Often the triggers are linked – this happens often, sometimes by design.  Think about the sugar/fat and salt/fat triggers and fast food restaurants, desserts in fancy restaurants, your local bakery, the gas station convenience store.  What do they have in common?  Lots of food with sugar/fat and salt/fat combinations.   They stare you in the face wherever you turn and at whatever hour.  Stir in some feelings and emotions, a not infrequent occurrence, and you have the perfect set-up for overeating.

Ways To Outsmart Food Triggers

  • Figure out which food makes you lose control.  Is it potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, or mac and cheese?  We all have our particular triggers.
  • What kinds of feelings make you run for the fridge?  Is it when you are sad, anxious, really happy, or just procrastinating?  Once you can identify the feeling, try to substitute a behavior other than eating – maybe a walk or a project.  Make a deal with yourself:  if I do X then I can eat Y.  But you have to do X first!
  • Be savvy and know when you are in the emotional danger zone where you are on the brink of rapidly spiraling out of eating control.Educate yourself about which kinds of foods are hidden saboteurs – or maybe not so hidden.  Beware the sugar/fat, salt/fat, or sugar/fat/salt combos.
  • Educate yourself about which kinds of foods are hidden saboteurs – or maybe not so hidden.  Beware the sugar/fat, salt/fat, or sugar/fat/salt combos.
  • Know your environmental triggers.  If the gas station convenience store screams candy bar then pump your gas at a gas station with no store.  If you have a history of overeating at X restaurant then go to Y instead.  If you know that you always overeat at Aunt Mary’s (could be all three triggers:  food, feelings, and environment are operational at her house) then have a strategy or plan in place to handle the situation.  Or maybe invite her to your house.
  • Keep the darn trigger foods out of your house.  Or, if they have to be there for other family members, or maybe for a party, make them difficult to get to.  Put them in the basement or the garage.  Make them inconvenient or really difficult to get to.  Not only is out of sight out of mind operational, we also tend to be lazy.  The more effort you have to exert to get to the food, the less likely you are to eat it.
  • This is a tough one:  sometimes you have to avoid thinking, talking and reading about food. Brain imaging research suggests that the addictive response of the brain to food could by calmed by not thinking about food. Obviously, you can’t be abstinent from food – you need to eat – but long conversations about it, might be more than your brain can bear before you succumb to the bakery or vending machine.  Don’t linger in the grocery store and skip the gourmet shop that opened three blocks away.
  • And, the time tested – wait at least 15 minutes then allow yourself to have the food – often works. Better yet, wait 15 minutes, try to create a diversion to get out of your trigger feeling, and change your environment – get out of the kitchen or away from the bakery aisle.

Table For 8? You Might Eat 96% More!

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No kidding.  You tend to eat for a longer amount of time — and eat more — when you’re with people you like compared to when you eat alone.  It could be because you mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, you’re using the good manners you were taught in fifth grade about not letting someone else eat alone, or you’re just having fun and enjoying your food. Most of us tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others.   Bottom line:  The longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Here’s the other thing:  friends and family influence what you eat.  Sometimes, it’s so easy to get involved with the conversation (or argument) that all the monitoring of what goes into your mouth goes out the window.  Look down at your plate.  Did you ever wonder where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink.  Those calories count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions.  They eat fast, you eat fast. They eat a lot, you eat a lot. Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

96% More

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase the amount that you eat when you eat with others.  Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

  • 35% more if you eat with one other person
  • 75% more with four at the table
  • 96% more with a group of seven or more.

SocialDieter Tip:

Think about who you are eating with – and why you’re eating with them.  If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.  But, if you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with a salad (dressing on the side, please) friend rather than the large pepperoni pizza group.  Remember, without thinking about it, you tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you are trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

Why Do You Still Eat More . . . Even When You’re Stuffed?

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You’ve been eating all day.  Eating everything – a bagel for breakfast, a chesse Danish for a midmorning snack, lunch with some friends.  This is followed by  a latte in the afternoon – and why not a cute cupcake to go with – or perhaps it’s a workday and you amble down to the hall to the vending machine or the snack room.  Oh, and it’s someone’s birthday so there’s that delicious birthday cake sitting in the middle of the table.  A little nibble of some cheese around six.  Uh oh.  Dinner plans that night – how can you eat more?

Somehow There Always Seems To Be Room

Into the restaurant.  A darn good one.  Good company, too.  How can you not go for it?  The food is supposed to be phenomenal.  You’re not hungry, but you eat, and eat.  Appetizer, entrée, bread, salad, and then it’s time for dessert. But dessert sounds appealing. And the chocolate whatchamacallit is what this restaurant is known for. You order it and eat it – every last fork full.

What Gives (certainly not your waistband)?

Amazingly, the signal to stop eating is usually not because your stomach is full (except in some extreme cases), but, according to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of the book, Mindless Eating,  a combination of things like how much you taste, chew, swallow, how much you think about the food you are eating, and how long you’ve been eating.

Incredibly, the faster most people eat, the more they eat. Eating quickly doesn’t give your brain the chance to get the message that you’re not hungry any more.  Research shows that it takes up to 20 minutes for your body and brain to get the message — a satiation signal — and realize that you’re full.  Think how much you can eat in that time span of 20 minutes – a burger, fries, pie, pizza, ice cream.  This calorie fest is all in added time — the time after your stomach is full but your brain hasn’t gotten the message yet.

Twenty Minutes Or Less

Research has shown that Americans start and finish their meals — and clear the table — in less than 20 minutes.  A study published in the journal Appetite, found that people eating lunch by themselves in a fast food restaurant  finish in 11 minutes, they finish in13 minutes in a workplace cafeteria, and in 28 minutes at a moderately priced restaurant.  Eating with three other people takes about twice as long – which ends up still being a really short chunk of time.

SocialDieter Tip:

Slow down when you eat.  Give your brain a chance to catch up.  How many times have you devoured what you’ve made or bought for lunch and then, almost immediately, decided that you’re still hungry?  So, you eat a whole bunch more – once again in a short period of time.  Then, about half an hour later, as your belly feels like it’s going to explode and you can’t unbutton any more buttons on your pants – you realize that you should have stopped before the seconds.  With slower eating (and maybe as some research suggerst, more chewing) and better pacing, your brain has a chance to synch its signals with the messages generated by putting food in your stomach.  You can even make yourself get up from the table and do something else – and promise yourself if you’re still hungry in 20 minutes you can have more.  If you’re in a restaurant, it’s the perfect time to excuse yourself and go to the rest room.  In most cases, after the 20 or so minutes, your belly and brain are both happy and you won’t want more to eat. Calories and uncomfortably expanding stomach saved!