Why do sandwiches taste better when someone else makes them?
When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that someone else prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way. — Daniel Kahneman
From page 38 of the New York Times Magazine, October 2, 2011 issue.
So now I’m thinking about all of those ginormous restaurant meals that we consume. You know the ones — an appetizer that’s a meal in and of itself; followed by plates that would be used as platters in any other setting holding about 4 pounds of food crammed in between your soup, salad, and bread troughs; all topped off with a 1500-calorie, molten-chocolate-covered cake that could fuel a marathoner for a week.
And, okay, maybe you don’t eat that amount of food every time you sit down at a restaurant, but even if you skip the appetizer and the dessert and stick with the main course, the majority of those choices are two to three times what most folks need to consume at one sitting.
But maybe this line of thinking — the idea that precontemplating your food, especially as you are preparing the meal — might be a support to healthier portion sizes. What a radical notion! So, if I make it myself, I’m likely to eat less of it? Cool.
There’s another piece of this that needs an underline — the ability to eat a different food even when we’re stuffed to the eyeballs with something else. So, if I keep it to a single food or foods eaten together (and not in sequence), I might eat less? Cool.
I’m thinking about this even a step further. What if there’s a spectrum of preconsumption? Maybe sitting down to an a-la-carte, all-you-can eat meal of 50 items (think potluck supper or a buffet) is on one end; ordering off a menu is closer to the middle; microwaving some frozen entrees is starting down the other side; and self-preparing a single, complicated dish from scratch is on the other?
Clicking on this chart will make it bigger.
Well, then while it will still matter what I choose from my options in each scenario, it may be that by being more aware of my propensity to eat more (and why I would) at the MegaBuffet Smorgasbord will help prevent me from going banana crackers and having a plate of everything offered. It could also help me make better choices about whether to eat something else after I’ve finished a meal at home. (I do love me some ice cream!)
Hmmmmm…
So, what do y’all think? Can preparing your own meals help you eat less? How do we incorporate this idea into life of healthy eating?
About Gina Lynette
I’m guilty. I’ve eaten massive meals that go way beyond what I need in order to satisfy my hunger and fuel my body. If I think about it, it does seem to be true that I tend to eat more at a restaurant than I do at home.
The frustrating fact is that I have regained almost all of the weight I lost in the MegaChallenge after keeping it off for almost 5 years, in spite of eating out less — not more! I started to point to this as counter-evidence to the Carnegie Mellon and other studies, but then I had an a ha that actually points to this stuff being plausible.
So, if I’m eating out less but gaining weight what changed?
Ned Andrew moved in. He cooks 95% of our meals. So, in essence, all of my meals have become “restaurant meals.” I’ve been aware of my tendency to eat when I’m not hungry because “it’s dinner time” and the family is all sitting around the table.
But, maybe I’m also eating more than I really need because all of this delicious food is being placed in front of me with little or no effort on my part. Add to that the almost automatic desire to demonstrate my appreciation of Ned’s effort by cleaning my plate. (Thanks, images of Starving Children evoked nightly at the dinner table during my childhood.)
Okay… I need to do some thinking on this. I probably ought to do it while running to nowhere.