午夜福利1000集合

IF I鈥橵E learned one thing from my 25 years of , it is this: when fighting the fat, and trying to eat healthily, changing your eating environment is easier than changing your mind. Through hundreds of secret studies, my team has set about uncovering the hidden persuaders around our homes that trick us into overeating 鈥� things like serving spoons, spouses, cupboards and colours. But most of these tempters (except maybe spouses) can also be reversed to make us slimmer and healthier.

Although there are many solutions to mindless eating, most of them will go undiscovered because if we go on a health kick, we tend to focus on food itself, not on our surroundings. We鈥檙e often too focused on eating less of one thing, more of another, or sticking to gruelling fad diets and exercise regimes.

All that requires willpower, which is hard work and has to last a lifetime to be truly successful. But there鈥檚 an easier solution. My latest research has found subtle ways to tweak our homes, workplaces, schools, restaurant dining and grocery shopping so we mindlessly eat less instead of more. If we want to automatically eat better, we don鈥檛 have to change our minds; we just have to optimise our surroundings.

Let鈥檚 start at home. Seemingly irrelevant decisions can set you up for a fall. Take the colour of your plate. If it鈥檚 the same colour as the food, you鈥檒l serve yourself more. We discovered this when we invited 60 people to a free pasta lunch at a summer alumni reunion at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. We gave them either a red plate or a white plate and sent half the diners over to a red pasta buffet (marinara sauce) and the other half to a white pasta buffet (Alfredo sauce).

鈥淚f we want to automatically eat better, we just have to optimise our surroundings鈥�

After they served themselves, we surreptitiously weighed their servings. Those who helped themselves to either white pasta on a white plate or red on red than those with plates that contrasted with their food. This is news you can use at home. And because white starches 鈥� pasta, rice and potatoes 鈥� are a big source of calories, using darker plates could be a smart strategy if you鈥檙e looking to lose weight.

Plates are just the start. To find out what a healthier home looks like, my team visited 230 homes in Syracuse, New York 鈥� a small city demographically representative of the rest of the US. We weighed the inhabitants and took pictures of their kitchens 鈥� the layout, what was on their shelves and in their fridges, all the food that was out on the kitchen counters rather than in their cupboards. Nothing went unsnapped. We then spent eight months classifying these kitchens to see what slim people do that influences their diets. We found that it鈥檚 kitchen content, rather than size, that makes all the difference, and that women are more susceptible to the lures there than men.

Cereal offender

Perhaps unsurprisingly, leaving food out on the counter was a barometer for bad eating habits. The average woman who kept potato chips on the counter weighed 3.6 kilograms more than her neighbour who didn鈥檛. That makes perfect sense. These snacks are very tempting 鈥� you can鈥檛 eat just one 鈥� and they can make you fat. But crisps aren鈥檛 anywhere near the biggest culprit. That accolade fell to meek, whole-grain breakfast cereal in boxes covered with pictures of smiling, healthy women with gleaming teeth.

Women who had even one box of breakfast cereal that was visible 鈥� anywhere in their kitchen 鈥� weighed 9.5 kilograms more than their neighbours who put the cereal out of sight. Cereal has what we call a health halo: the boxes are covered with health messages, so we underestimate the calories it contains and eat too much of the stuff. But having cereal on the counter had no impact on men, possibly because those products aren鈥檛 marketed at them, or perhaps they simply spent less time in the kitchen.

If you鈥檙e looking to shed some weight, putting away the snacks and cereal is no guarantee things will change overnight, but it might just tilt the scales in the right direction. Don鈥檛 stop there though. We are often told that sitting down to a meal at the dinner table, rather than mindlessly eating in front of the TV, is a good way to eat less and better. But it鈥檚 not that simple.

Some families serve meals by crowding all their serving dishes onto the table, other families serve food off the stove or counter. We found that families in the second category ate 19 per cent less in total compared with those serving themselves at the table. It seems that when the food is in easy reach we mindlessly serve ourselves more, whereas having to get up and walk a few paces was enough for people to ask themselves if they really were still hungry. The answer is usually 鈥渘ope鈥�. Although, if you want to eat more greens, plant that salad bowl right in the middle of the table.

午夜福利1000集合y measures

Food is not the only enemy when it comes to overindulgence, as many of us know too well at this time of year. So if you love wine, but hate headaches, here鈥檚 how to automatically drink about 10 per cent less. We brought 85 wine drinkers into our lab for happy hour, gave them different glasses and made them either sit or stand. We found that people tend to focus on the height of what they pour and not the width, so that hold the same amount.

Plus, looking down at a glass makes it appear more full than looking at it from roughly the same level as the liquid. As a result, we鈥檙e likely to pour 12 per cent less into a glass that鈥檚 sitting on the table compared with one we鈥檙e holding.

Just as with the plates we use, contrast also has an effect. Because red wine is easier to see than white wine, we pour about 9 per cent less red wine into whatever glass we鈥檙e using.

But it鈥檚 not just wine glasses. One winter we visited 86 Philadelphia bartenders and asked them to pour out the amount of alcohol they would use to make a gin and tonic, a whisky on the rocks, a rum and coke, and a vodka tonic. Whether they had worked there for 32 minutes or 32 years, the typical bartender poured , wide tumblers than into highball glasses of the same volume. They focused on the height of the liquid and not the width.

The bartenders were shocked when we showed them how much they had over-poured. Yet strikingly, even when we asked them to pour again 2 minutes later we saw the same result. This highlights another point we consistently find with our research. Don鈥檛 think that being aware of these pitfalls will make you avoid them 鈥� it won鈥檛. In the chaos of daily life, our automatic behaviours mindlessly fall back into the same mistakes we鈥檝e always made. Instead, you have to take steps to avoid the traps.

Click on the interactive images below to explore ways to fatproof your world:

For my book, Slim by Design, my team and I devised a scorecard that includes the 100 easiest home-related tips. Try the shorter version of this quiz (see 鈥�午夜福利1000集合 check your home鈥�) to see how well your kitchen fares.

One benefit of the scorecard is that it usually shows progress each time you fill it out. It can give you a tangible measure that you鈥檙e doing the right things.

Reorganising your home is the first part. But what if you undo all that good work when you go out to eat? The first moments you spend in a restaurant could set you up for a fall, because where you sit might influence what you order.

We recently visited 27 restaurants across the country, and measured and mapped the layout of each one. We knew how far each table or booth was from the windows and front door, whether it was in a secluded or well-travelled area, how light or dark it was and how far it was from the kitchen, bar, toilets and TV sets. After diners began arriving, we were able to track what they ordered and how it related to where they sat. In one restaurant in particular we collected every single receipt, every day, for three months.

Window of opportunity

So are there unhealthy tables in restaurants? This is preliminary, but so far it looks like people ordered healthier foods if they sat by a window or in a well-lit part of the restaurant. It seems that they ate fattier, calorie-laden food and ordered more of it if they sat at a dark table or booth. People sitting farthest from the front door ate the fewest salads and were 73 per cent more likely to order dessert. A table of four sitting within two tables of the bar drank an average of three more beers or alcoholic drinks with a mixer than those sitting just one table farther away. The closer a table was to a TV screen, the more fried food a person bought and people sitting at high-top bar tables ordered more salads and fewer desserts.

鈥淧eople sitting farthest from the door were 73 per cent more likely to order dessert鈥�

Some of this makes sense. The darker it is, the more 鈥渋nvisible鈥� and therefore less conspicuous or guilty you might feel, and the harder it is to see how much you鈥檙e eating. Seeing the sunlight, people or trees outside might make you more conscious about how you look, make you think about walking or prime you for a green salad.

Equally, sitting next to the bar might make you think it鈥檚 more normal to order that second drink, and watching TV might distract you from thinking twice about what you order.

If tall tables make it harder to slouch or spread out, they might cause you to feel more in control and to order in the same way.

Does sitting in a dark, quiet booth in the back of the restaurant make you order more dessert? Not necessarily. It might be that dessert-eaters naturally gravitate to those tables, or that a waiter takes them there out of habit.

We have an expression in our lab: 鈥淚f you want to be skinny, do what skinny people do.鈥� Either well-lit, elevated tables near windows make you eat better, or people who eat better like to eat at well-lit, elevated tables near windows. But while you鈥檙e contemplating the causality, the couple next to you just took the last high table by the window.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淓asy as pie鈥�

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