Transcripts

Mike Carruthers:
You'd probably like to think that you watch what you eat, however…

Brian Wansink:
We've done over 200 studies over the last twenty years. We find that no matter how tuned in a person is to what they think to eat, and how much they eat we are really just nations of mindless eaters.

Dr. Brian Wansink, Professor of Nutritional Science at Cornell University and author of the book Mindless Eating, says his studies show that if you eat out of a large package of say chips or candy, you will almost always eat more than if you eat out of a small package.

Same thing on your plate: If you use a bigger plate, you end up pouring more because eight inches on the six-inch plate looks like a good portion. Eight inches on the twelve-inch plate looks like barely an appetizer. So we find that just these little things like this really influence how much people eat.

In a restaurant, we think food tastes better if the menu says it does. Brian conducted a study where one group of people was given something called a plain seafood filet, the other group got…

Succulent Italian seafood filet - in both these cases it was just pretty much a dried fish- stick. But if people believed what they're eating was a succulent Italian seafood filet - you rated the food as tasting better, you rated the restaurant as better and they were more likely to claim the chef had some European culinary training - all we did was change two words.

Tomorrow, why eating "family style" is a bad way to eat - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.