The secret to losing weight is eating less, but that is easier said than done!
However, new research suggests that using a bigger fork to eat those smaller meals may help you feel more satisfied.
A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research served customers at an Italian restaurant two lunches and two dinners in a two-day experiment. Researchers randomly selected tables to receive forks either 20% larger or 20% smaller than the restaurants normal forks.
After weighing each plate before and after in order to determine how much food the customers consumed, results showed that customers given BIGGER forks ate LESS!
The study authors suggest that our hunger and visual cue of the food left on a plate coincide with each other, writing:
“[D]iners focus on the visual cue of whether they are making any dent in the amount of food on their plates […]. The smaller fork (compared to the larger fork) appears to provide less satisfactory goal progress; that is, diners feel they are not making much of a dent in consuming their food and, hence, satisfying their hunger. This, in turn, focuses diners to put in more effort (e.g., more forkfuls) toward satiating their hunger. As a result, diners with smaller forks consume more food than those using larger forks.”
However, using a big fork ALL THE TIME may not yield the same portion-controlling results.
In fact, when the same researchers attempted the experiment while serving snack-sized pasta salad portions to college students with the same sized larger and smaller forks, students ate MORE with the larger forks.
Inneresting!
[Image via AP Images.]
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