Simple Swaps for More Mindful Eating

by Brian Wansink, PHD on Feb 12, 2016

Family-Style Seconds and Thirds

Some families serve family-style meals and crowd all their serving bowls onto the table. Other families pre-serve 
their food directly off the stove or counter. We found that people who served from the stove or counter ate 19% less total food compared with those serving themselves right off the table (Payne, Smith & Wansink 2010). Having to get up and walk another 6 feet for the food was enough for people to ask, “Am I really that hungry?” The answer’s usually “Nope.” On the other hand, if you want to eat more salad, plant that salad bowl right in the middle of the table.

If eating family-style—piling all of the serving dishes on the table—is a nonnegotiable must in your house, there might be a workaround. Serving out of bowls with lids might cut down on seconds or thirds. In one of our candy dish studies, simply putting a lid on a candy dish cut down how many Hershey’s Kisses people ate by about a third (Painter, Wansink & Hieggelke 2002; Wansink, Painter & Lee 2006). When food is out of sight, it’s out of mind. The same idea might work if you cover the casserole instead of temptingly leaving the top off.

These tablescape changes are easy. What keeps us from making them, however, is that we think we’re smarter than a bowl. As a result we think, Oh, now that I know this, it won’t happen to me, so we don’t make any changes. But during the day’s chaos, our automatic behaviors lead us to make the same mindless eating mistakes we’ve always made.