Brian Wasink is the director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and a leading food psychologist.
So he’s kinda someone you’d trust on matters of food science.
He’s just written a new book called Slim by Design and in it he explores how minor factors can affect how many calories we can consume in a sitting.
One of those minor factors is what table you sit at in a restaurant! Wasink said:
“We recently visited 27 restaurants across the country, and we measured and mapped out the layout of each one. Some restaurants we visited for only one or two nights, but at one restaurant we collected every receipt for every day for three straight months.
At the end of three months, our Restaurant War Room back in Ithaca, New York, looked like a recycling center. It was full of huge bags stuffed with receipts that were wrinkled or wadded, smeared with steak sauce or wine stains, and autographed with things like “Thanks, Tiffany” and smiley faces.
By analyzing these A-1-smeared artifacts, we were able to figure out whether somebody at Table 91 way in back was more likely to order salad or less likely to order an extra drink than somebody at Table 7 ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥which is way up front, next to the door and bar.”
Basically, he found that people would order healthier food if they were sitting near a window or a well-lit part of the restaurant.
People sitting in dark areas tended to eat heavier foods and more of them. Those sitting within two tables of a bar drank three more beers on average than a person sitting further away too. Even the closeness of a TV to a table affected how much fried food someone ordered.
He’s not yet sure exactly what his data means but it could simply be that the more hidden you feel, the more likely you are to make unhealthy choices.
We’re sitting up front, near a window from now on!
