Healthy by default
How to trick yourself into eating better and less
Being overweight is associated with an increased risk of common conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and has been clearly linked in studies to an overall increased risk of cancer.
Most recently, researchers at the University of Bristol have found that lifelong excess weight almost doubles the risk of womb or endometrial cancer. Not just that, but excess baggage causes wear and tear on our joints and speeds up the aging process.
The problem is that knowing that being overweight or obese can cause so many health concerns doesn't automatically lead to us doing something about it.
The basic weight-loss formula is simple: eat healthy foods, and not too much of them, and take regular exercise.
Yet, in reality, we often struggle to control how much we consume, not because our bodies need all the calories we take in, but because we crave them for psychological reasons, like comfort or celebration.
So how do we train ourselves out of those unhealthy relationships with cake, cheese and baguettes, for example, when such food is so easily available (and often cheap)?
The answer, say some experts, is to trick your mind into taking less in but still feeling satiated.
So it's good news that Japanese researchers have engineered a set of chopsticks that can artificially create the taste of salt via electrical stimulation. Wearing a minicomputer on a wristband, the diner receives a sense of saltiness when the device transmits sodium ions from the food to the mouth through the chopsticks, explains professor Homei Miyashita from Meiji University in Tokyo. His team, which worked with food and drink manufacturer Kirin on the innovation, hopes to make the chopsticks available to consumers next year.
If that all sounds a little futuristic, however, there are other ways to fool yourself into eating better, and less.
For example, placing meals on smaller plates and bowls; various studies have found that halving the plate size leads to an average reduction of 30 per cent in the amount of food consumed.
According to weight loss advice from the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K., by using smaller plates and bowls, we may be able to gradually get used to eating smaller portions without going hungry.
“It takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain it's full, so eat slowly and stop eating before you feel full,” says the guidance.
Eating from heavier rather than lighter bowls can also help you feel more satisfied, according to Betina Piqueras-Fiszman and Charles Spence, authors of The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining.
Minimizing the colour contrast between your crockery and your table coverings, using smaller cutlery and drinking from tall, slender glasses rather than curved, fluted or short and wide vessels have all been found to decrease the amount of food or drink consumed.
In one study, Oliver Genschow and colleagues at the Universities of Basel and Mannheim offered participants snacks on red, white or blue plates and drinks in red or blue cups. Those who ate and drank from red kitchenware consumed less. One explanation given for this is that we associate red with danger or stopping.
Clinical psychologist Linda Blair says cues like these are key: “We respond to what we knew before and what we did before as being the right thing, so if you want to change you have to not eat in the same place. Set a different place at your table so you don't have the cue of `where's my big helping of spaghetti?'” she says. “You have to not give yourself the option of what you had before.”
She also suggests making each meal look pretty — for instance, by placing flowers on the table or using nice napkins, because this sends your brain the message that “you deserve to be treated well, and well means healthy” — and it may also prevent you from feeling as if you're depriving yourself.
“`Well' is not a bag of (chips),” says Blair.
“If the surroundings are really lovely, you don't order chips, you order grilled fish because that's classy. It's about capitalizing on habits and cues instead of being a slave to them. You're fooling yourself in some ways but it's motivating.”
Rob Hobson, a registered nutritionist, recommends mindful eating: putting your knife and fork down between mouthfuls; sitting down to eat; not eating in front of the television. These habits can slow down the eating process, giving your body time to feel full, and preventing mindless excess consumption.
“People who eat mindfully manage to eat less throughout the day,” he says.
One last trick recommended by experts is to sprinkle a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon on to dishes, too, as its natural sweetness can trick your tastebuds into satiety and relieve the urge to eat something sugary.
Research also suggests that cinnamon has a role to play in stabilizing blood sugar and making us less likely to crave high energy foods too, making every gram of cinnamon a win-win additive for anyone worried about their weight.
It takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain it's full, so eat slowly. National Health Service, U.K.