Stop Mindless Eating Habits

An average person makes over 200 decisions about food on a daily basis. Clients overeat for a number of reasons, and not because they’re hungry. Have you ever stopped to think about the influence of all those cues that surround your clients every day — different shapes, smells, distractions, size of plates, family and friends in clients’ mindless eating habits?

Food psychologist Dr. Wansink sure did and he proved it with numerous studies at Cornell University. Take, for instance, his experiment with stale popcorn at a movie theater in Chicago on a Saturday matinee. Most people who came to this show had already eaten lunch. Every person who bought a ticket was given a free soda and either a medium- or large-sized bucket of popcorn. An interesting fact: The popcorn was extremely stale, as it had been popped five days earlier! Once the movie ended, everyone was asked to fill out a survey.

Those who got the larger bucket had to reply to: “Do you think you ate more because you had the larger size?” Most replied, “Of course not!” Yet when weighing the big-bucket group, these had consumed an average of 173 more calories of stale popcorn. They ate due to the cues that surrounded them: people, the movies, emotions brought on by being in the movies, sounds and smells; the bucket size made no difference. This study was repeated in different cities throughout the nation, always with the same results.

Frank took them