While attending a recent conference in Florida, I went to breakfast at a restaurant and ordered a whole-grain muffin, as did my companion. Boy, were those muffins big! My companion picked hers up and started nibbling—and ended up eating the whole thing. I first cut mine into quarters, then ate two of the pieces and felt satisfied. I also felt fortunate to have recently read the intriguing study that clued me in to this simple cut-food-up-and-eat-less strategy.
The 301 study volunteers fasted overnight and skipped breakfast before the experiment began. Then they each were given a bagel and cream cheese. One group of participants got bagels that were whole…the other group got identical bagels, except that theirs had been cut into four pieces. After eating as much of their bagels as they wanted, they spent 20 minutes filling out questionnaires about food preferences—a delaying tactic, because it takes about 20 minutes after eating for the brain to get the message that the stomach is full. Next, each participant was invited to eat as much as desired of a complimentary lunch that included a turkey sandwich, veggies with dressing, crackers with meat and cheese, mozzarella sticks, pasta, potato salad and a cupcake.
Fascinating findings: Compared with participants who had received whole bagels, those whose bagels had been cut up ate 8% less of their bagels—but the real revelation was that they also ate 40% less of the big lunch! Apparently, the cut-up bagels had done a much better job of satisfying participants’ appetites, so when offered additional food later, they were less tempted by it.
Especially in this era of portion sizes run riot (as with those Florida mega-muffins), it’s smart for us to make regular use of this simple tactic—cut up food to make it seem more plentiful and thus more satisfying. The way I see it, we have nothing to lose but weight.
