A Big Fat Crisis (29 page)

First, they found no differences between the eating behaviors of lean and obese participants. Obese participants did not eat faster than lean ones. The larger the size of the bite, the faster the subjects ate. If the subjects ate the smaller pieces, they just took longer to eat. Regardless of whether the eating pattern included large or small bites, or whether the women took a longer or shorter time to complete the meal, the participants ended up eating the same amount of food. There were large differences among people with respect to how quickly they ate, but the speed of eating was not related to the total amount consumed. Although this was a small study, it did not appear that slow eating and little bites will likely be helpful in reducing the total amount consumed.

Will Using Smaller Plates Help?

Another bit of advice we often hear is to use smaller plates so that we will be more likely to put less food on our plates and thus eat less. Once again, this seemingly commonsense advice did not hold up to rigorous scrutiny.
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To understand more about the potential role of plate size, Dr. Barbara Rolls, the Penn State researcher whose experiments on food variety and portion size were described earlier, invited participants to her lab to eat lunch once a week. Each week, she served the same foods but varied the size of the plate. Just as with the pizza example in
Chapter 4
, the largest plate had more than double the surface area of the smallest plate. The participants were asked to help themselves either to one main course or to a buffet with five different food choices. The foods were weighed before they ate and the remaining amount was weighed when they finished, so it was possible to determine the quantity eaten.

It turned out that the size of the meal consumed did not differ regardless of the size of the plate. The participants’ ratings of hunger and satiety did not differ by the size of the plate either. When the participants had only one main course to choose from, three-fourths of them didn’t even notice there had been a difference in the size of the
plate. However, when the participants had to go back and forth to the buffet table to get food, most of them did notice the difference in the plate sizes.

In a follow-up study, participants were given a set amount of food. The researchers then gave them plates seventeen, twenty-two, or twenty-five centimeters in diameter (about 6.5, 8.5, or 10 inches). In this condition, again, the size of the plate had no effect on how much they ate.

Will Hundred-Calorie Packs Help?

Portion size appears to be more important than plate size in determining how much people eat. When portion sizes are reduced, people eat less. Because of this the food industry has developed products like hundred-calorie packs. These are typically limited portions of snack foods—like chocolate chip cookies, crackers, chips, or other foods that have high levels of calories per gram. It makes sense that if we are served less, we will eat less. However, one study suggests that small snack bags might have a perverse effect and encourage people to eat more.

Researchers invited people to a laboratory with the cover story that they wanted participants to watch television and rate some TV advertisements.
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They told the participants they wanted to simulate the same conditions as in a typical home, so they left snacks in the room, telling them to feel free to help themselves, because a lot of people snack when they watch TV.

For all the groups, the researchers measured how many chips they ate while watching and rating the TV advertisements. For half the participants, they provided five small bags of potato chips (forty-five grams); for the other half, they provided one big bag of potato chips, weighing two hundred grams. They also divided each of these groups in half. One group got no other instructions, but the second group was first primed to be concerned about their body image. Before being asked to watch the advertisements, they weighed the second group of participants, measured their waists, and had them look at themselves in the mirror.

The results were unexpected. The group that was in the room with the small bags ended up eating more than the group with the single big bag. This was mainly because the people offered the small bags were more likely to open one, while just a small number opened the big bag. Of the individuals who opened any bag, the group that ate the least were those primed to worry about their body image and who had access to the big bag.

It seems that when the participants were reminded about their weight, they were more likely to monitor themselves and limit what they consumed. In contrast, the group with the small bags may have felt that having the chips already measured out for them ensured that they would not be eating too much.

An alternative explanation is that the participants may have been inhibited about opening the big bag because there was only one available and they were “guests” in a strange setting, whereas they were less inhibited about opening one of five bags available.

It may work the same at home. If you have only one bag of chips, you might save it for a special occasion; but if you have several small bags, you might be more likely to have one every day.

Alternatives to Dieting

If we want to control what and how much we eat, applying insights on human behavior from psychology and behavioral economics could potentially be more helpful than trying to diet. Instead of focusing on avoiding food, we might be more successful by paying attention to the food environment. Here’s what I suggest:

1. Look at the current food environment and purveyors of processed foods with suspicion
. One of the strongest human drives is the desire to be treated fairly and not to be duped or taken advantage of. We don’t like to think we are getting a raw deal. So try to remember that food branding, celebrity endorsements, and elegant packaging are simply tricks to get you to buy a product. The value of the product remains unchanged regardless of what is on the wrapper. If we start viewing the worst offenders in the food and beverage industries
with disdain, their efforts will fail to persuade us to buy their products. We will have inoculated ourselves against companies that sell us junk foods and that advertise and market those foods relentlessly. The best thing about this approach is that we won’t have to use up any of our willpower or limited cognitive capacity to reject these unhealthy foods—we will say no automatically, as we do when faced with anything suspicious.

2. Take a stand on food
. Most people, including me, love to eat sweet foods and crunchy, salty snacks. But it’s possible to learn to dislike them on principle, which will make resisting them a lot easier. The trick is seeing beyond the food and appreciating how the process of creating, processing, packaging, and marketing it creates a spiral of problems for many people and for the planet.

By way of example, I have learned to dislike sugar-sweetened beverages. As a youth, my favorite beverage was a root beer float, but now I won’t drink any soda except soda water. Basically, I have conditioned myself to associate sodas with poor health and social harms like poverty and even global warming. (Yes, you can help reduce global warming by consuming less!) Sodas and other bottled drinks as well as processed foods waste a lot of materials, create a lot of trash, and generally waste the money of people who are sucked into the illusion that the drink is more than the drink or the snack is more than the snack. By focusing on the bad qualities of foods that should be avoided—the horrible chemicals and preservatives in them, the negative consequences of consuming them—it is possible to learn to dislike them. Once you dislike something, it is much, much easier to refuse.

3. Cut your food budget
. Instead of going on a diet, try saving money. If you buy less, you will usually end up eating less. If you are not losing weight doing what you are doing now, you are probably buying (and eating) too much food. Think of weight loss as money in the bank. The first thing to save on is snacking. Just don’t eat between meals. (Or if you must, limit yourself to a fruit or vegetable that costs less than fifty cents.) Whatever you would have ordinarily spent on a snack, whether it is an energy bar or a cappuccino, take that money and put it in a
special wallet. Don’t spend it on any other food. If you have already cut out snacks but are still having trouble losing weight, then you need to eat smaller meals. Buy less bread. Skip the pasta. Save money on the amount of meat or cheese you buy. Any person who wants to lose weight but is spending more on food as a result is missing a key concept of weight loss: eating less should translate into spending less.

4. Share whenever possible
. Most of us are attracted to food and tend to eat everything on our plate. Even so, we can restrain ourselves if we think of higher social obligations. Consider hunger strikes: people are able to starve themselves because they are thinking of a goal that is larger than themselves. Of course, most of us will never be that extreme, but we are all quite capable of being generous, charitable, and willing to sacrifice for the sake of others. Many parents, for example, will forgo things they like in order to provide more for their children or aid to those in need. If you see something tempting or are dining in a restaurant that serves particularly large portions, share your meal with your companions or save a good amount for the other people in your life who might like it as much as or more than you. If you go out to eat, put at least half of your entrée in a “to go” box—give it to someone else or think of the benefits that a compost pile will derive from your contribution. In general, thinking about others is a good way to take your mind off your own problems.

5. Structure your meals and eating habits—control your personal food environment
. If you develop stable routines, it will be easier to avoid eating too much. The standard advice to eat three meals a day at the same time and same place can help you avoid all the extra calories from snacking and grazing, a common challenge for weight control. Plan your meals ahead of time for the entire week so that you don’t get in the position where nothing is available and you have to go out. Last-minute restaurant or supermarket runs often lead to impulse buying and impulse eating. Enjoy the planning, anticipation, and creation of delicious meals. Eating only what you need doesn’t mean food will not be enjoyable. Rather, eating will be more enjoyable
because you won’t feel any guilt or dismay that you are compromising your health.

6. Forget about dieting
. Just get active, especially if your main concern is your lifespan. You will probably live longer by getting fit rather than getting thin. Give up as many motorized trips as possible. Instead, walk, skate, cycle, and use the stairs. Walk or bike through every park and neighborhood in your city. Join or start a walking club, a soccer team, a basketball league, or a regular dance event in your local park. Advocate for
ciclovías
in your city. Put all the energy you have previously devoted to food into physical activity—increasing your own as well as others’.

7. Don’t give up on collective action
. As long as we allow companies to exploit our neurophysiology, it’s not going to be easy for us to control our eating behaviors. If it were easy, I wouldn’t have to write this book, and you wouldn’t have to read it. We are a species that functions socially. Just as one of the mechanisms for overeating is through imitation of others to achieve social harmony and cohesion, we have to find the common factors in our eating behaviors and work together to address the true causes of our dietary problems. We have to worry less about the corporate imperatives of the food and beverage industries and instead focus on developing regulations that are good for our health. The collective health of our nation must be our ultimate goal.

You Can Act for the Collective (and Your Own) Good

As much as I would hope that people would be able to transcend the food environment on their own, not everyone will be able to trick their brain and ignore tempting foods. Instead, it will be collective action that will change business as usual. We can make simple changes in our environment that will protect people from obesity.

Just as advocates for people with disabilities passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has transformed every community, one curb cut at a time, you can foster the changes in the food environment
that will protect people from obesity. Many people are already deeply involved in this work. Changes depend on individuals who either take the bull by its horns and do it themselves or who goad their elected officials to pass necessary legislation to promote our health.

Here are a few things individuals can try:

Write letters to the editor, blog, tweet, and contact your elected officials
. Share the idea that the environment has to be changed to work for people rather than against them. The more people hear about this perspective, the more rapidly a movement for a safer food environment will take off. Don Gaede, a physician in Fresno, sent me the following letter that he had published in his local paper, the
Fresno Bee
:

Dear Editor,

I was waiting in line at the pharmacy to pick up my prescription when my eyes settled on the large rack of candy bars, conveniently located within easy reach. For a moment, I was tempted to indulge.

Then my emotion changed to annoyance: Why is this pharmacy trying to entice me and all their other customers to eat junk food? I began taking note of the checkout lanes in other stores. Almost every one of them, whether they’re selling groceries or crafts or hardware, puts high calorie snacks in their checkout lines.

With nearly two thirds of Americans overweight or obese, and childhood obesity tripling within a generation, the last thing we need is enticingly placed junk food everywhere we shop. These “impulse buys” obviously help the businesses’ bottom lines, but this profit comes at the expense of people’s health.