Does The Utensil You Use Contribute Or Detract From Your Eating Experience?

Ever noticed how using a larger plate can make you pile on larger portions? Well, the eating utensils you are using could be contributing to your food experience, as well. Scientists at the University of Oxford studied how eating implements affect people’s perception of how food tastes, as well as how expensive it is. Crazy, right?

According to researcher Dr. Vanessa Harrar:

“How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, feel of the food in our mouths, aroma, and the feasting of our eyes. Even before we put food into our mouths our brains have made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience…

“Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears. So, when serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background on which it is presented (plate or cutlery) and, therefore, tastes different. This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.”

For example, when participants ate yogurt from a light spoon, the yogurt seems denser and pricier. When foods were eaten from a knife, they seemed saltier.

Now, I personally love using teensy tiny utensils (I have an affinity for things being smaller than they are supposed to; I think it stems from my childhood obsession with dollhouses, which is obviously totally important to this story), so when I get to use them, I enjoy eating noticeably more, as silly as that sounds. It’s fascinating that people’s experiences can change with their eating utensils — when here I thought I was the only weird one — and exciting that science is discovering more and more about the oddities of our brain in relation to diet.

Photo: Shutterstock

View the original article here

Weight Talk At Home Leads To Teen Eating Disorders

This just in: apples do not fall far from trees.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota have found a link between the way food is discussed in the home and the likelihood that a teenager will develop disordered eating.  The study was just published on Monday by JAMA Pediatrics.

Here’s the study’s abstract:

Importance  The prevalence of weight-related problems in adolescents is high. Parents of adolescents may wonder whether talking about eating habits and weight is useful or detrimental.

Objective  To examine the associations between parent conversations about healthful eating and weight and adolescent disordered eating behaviors.

Design  Cross-sectional analysis using data from 2 linked multilevel population-based studies.

Setting  Anthropometric assessments and surveys completed at school by adolescents and surveys completed at home by parents in 2009-2010.

Participants  Socioeconomically and racially/ethnically diverse sample (81% ethnic minority; 60% low income) of adolescents from Eating and Activity in Teens 2010 (EAT 2010) (n = 2793; mean age, 14.4 years) and parents from Project Families and Eating and Activity in Teens (Project F-EAT) (n = 3709; mean age, 42.3 years).

Exposure  Parent conversations about healthful eating and weight/size.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Adolescent dieting, unhealthy weight-control behaviors, and binge eating.

Results  Mothers and fathers who engaged in weight-related conversations had adolescents who were more likely to diet, use unhealthy weight-control behaviors, and engage in binge eating. Overweight or obese adolescents whose mothers engaged in conversations that were focused only on healthful eating behaviors were less likely to diet and use unhealthy weight-control behaviors. Additionally, subanalyses with adolescents with data from 2 parents showed that when both parents engaged in healthful eating conversations, their overweight or obese adolescent children were less likely to diet and use unhealthy weight-control behaviors.

Conclusions and Relevance  Parent conversations focused on weight/size are associated with increased risk for adolescent disordered eating behaviors, whereas conversations focused on healthful eating are protective against disordered eating behaviors.

The research team noticed that those children whose parents focused on weight and body size were more likely to engage in disordered eating behaviors like excessive weight control or binge eating. Conversely, teens whose parents focused on health and nutrition were less likely to have problematic relationships with food.

The way parents talk to their teens about food and weight is critical, as chief researcher from the study, Jerica M. Berge puts it ”Adolescence is a time when more youths engage in disordered eating behaviors, it is important for parents to understand what types of conversations may be helpful or harmful in regard to disordered eating behaviors and how to have these conversations with their adolescents.”

So, how should parents talk to their adolescent kids about diet and nutrition? Instead of telling a teen to lay off the donuts because you think they look bad, tell them that consuming so much sugar is generally not great for the body and could make them sick.

Other than using the right language to discuss food with teens, parents should lead by example by choosing healthy foods for the sake of nutrition and exercising for longevity and wellness rather than weight loss. Basically, teenagers feel shitty enough all the time; value health and feeling good over more shallow pursuits.

Story via HealthLine//Image via Shutterstock

View the original article here

Does The Utensil You Use Contribute Or Detract From Your Eating Experience?

Ever noticed how using a larger plate can make you pile on larger portions? Well, the eating utensils you are using could be contributing to your food experience, as well. Scientists at the University of Oxford studied how eating implements affect people’s perception of how food tastes, as well as how expensive it is. Crazy, right?

According to researcher Dr. Vanessa Harrar:

“How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, feel of the food in our mouths, aroma, and the feasting of our eyes. Even before we put food into our mouths our brains have made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience…

“Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears. So, when serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background on which it is presented (plate or cutlery) and, therefore, tastes different. This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.”

For example, when participants ate yogurt from a light spoon, the yogurt seems denser and pricier. When foods were eaten from a knife, they seemed saltier.

Now, I personally love using teensy tiny utensils (I have an affinity for things being smaller than they are supposed to; I think it stems from my childhood obsession with dollhouses, which is obviously totally important to this story), so when I get to use them, I enjoy eating noticeably more, as silly as that sounds. It’s fascinating that people’s experiences can change with their eating utensils — when here I thought I was the only weird one — and exciting that science is discovering more and more about the oddities of our brain in relation to diet.

Photo: Shutterstock

View the original article here

Does The Utensil You Use Contribute Or Detract From Your Eating Experience?

Ever noticed how using a larger plate can make you pile on larger portions? Well, the eating utensils you are using could be contributing to your food experience, as well. Scientists at the University of Oxford studied how eating implements affect people’s perception of how food tastes, as well as how expensive it is. Crazy, right?

According to researcher Dr. Vanessa Harrar:

“How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, feel of the food in our mouths, aroma, and the feasting of our eyes. Even before we put food into our mouths our brains have made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience…

“Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears. So, when serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background on which it is presented (plate or cutlery) and, therefore, tastes different. This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.”

For example, when participants ate yogurt from a light spoon, the yogurt seems denser and pricier. When foods were eaten from a knife, they seemed saltier.

Now, I personally love using teensy tiny utensils (I have an affinity for things being smaller than they are supposed to; I think it stems from my childhood obsession with dollhouses, which is obviously totally important to this story), so when I get to use them, I enjoy eating noticeably more, as silly as that sounds. It’s fascinating that people’s experiences can change with their eating utensils — when here I thought I was the only weird one — and exciting that science is discovering more and more about the oddities of our brain in relation to diet.

Photo: Shutterstock

View the original article here