Seduced by Snacks?

[betnich]

From the New York Times... article on how we make food choices...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/dining/11snac.html?em&ex=1160712000&en=a911b55880c42f1a&ei=5087%0A

[Nancy LC]

Very interesting!

[KvonM]

it's very interesting... definetely not a new approach, and it drives home one of the big issues that nutritionists across the board have been screaming about: portion size. what we think is a "serving" and how food manufacturers package things has always been horribly off. i never understood how a can of soda could be 2 servings... who was going to save an open can of soda?

maybe i'm deluding myself, but i've always eaten based on whether or not i'm full, not based on what others around me are eating or how large the portion i've been given is. i don't push myself to finish things because i know i'm going to be in pain later if i do... talk about aversive conditioning! i'm not subject to the "pavlovian movie response"... i don't even like drinking soda during a movie. i know that ordering an appetizer or having a salad before a meal at a restaurant will mean i can't finish my entree, and dessert is almost always out of the question.

the only thing i disagree with is his tricks to readjust your environmental eating habits, because trying to overcome subliminal cues with obvious ones tends to defeat the purpose. i think just being aware of what you're eating in EVERY circumstance will help more than who you sit next to at dinner.

[Nancy LC]

The problem is our "fullness" regulator doesn't work all that well. I know for me, it takes a good 20-30 minutes after eating for it to register. If I'm really packing it in, it doesn't register until 20-30 minutes later that my gut is about bursting.

maybe i'm deluding myself, but i've always eaten based on whether or not i'm full, not based on what others around me are eating or how large the portion i've been given is.
I think this guy's research is showing that we're not conscious of the things that influence our eating.

[KvonM]

I think this guy's research is showing that we're not conscious of the things that influence our eating.

oh i understand... i'm more guilty of unconscious drinking than unconscious eating. i usually have a cup of coffee, a big thing of water, and a diet soda sitting at my desk and i'll cycle between the three. i do much better with that than nibbling all day long and then thinking that i need to eat lunch.

[Nancy LC]

Heh! Well... the thing with unconscious influences is you're not conscious of them. So by definition, if you're not conscious of them you can't really judge whether you're guilty or not. :D

[ProfGumby]

it's very interesting....... portion size. what we think is a "serving" and how food manufacturers package things has always been horribly off. i never understood how a can of soda could be 2 servings... who was going to save an open can of soda?.........

This is done on purpose, I believe. I this way they can claim lower numbers of bad ingredients and higher numbers of good ones, per serving.

I look at it this way, if your company was dumping chemicals into the lake, and the EPA came along and said, "Whoa, too many parts per million, fix it or be fined!"

All you would do is build a new discharge pipe and more tha double the outflow of lake water. Bingo, you just cut your parts per million in half.

Hey it worked for a paper company near here, and it is working on nutritional labels all over the country....

Is this why we overdo it, I think Nancy was a lot closer with the part about or full level indicator being haywire....

[arc]

The problem is our "fullness" regulator doesn't work all that well. I know for me, it takes a good 20-30 minutes after eating for it to register. If I'm really packing it in, it doesn't register until 20-30 minutes later that my gut is about bursting.

In my experience, this is almost always from eating too fast. I found that once I slowed way down, my fullness meter worked a lot better. I would really pay attention to my food, put the fork/utensil down between bites, stop eating long enough to actually talk to a family member, don't eat anything with my hands (I used to eat pizza with a fork, cutting small pieces), take very small bites and thoroughly chew them so I could actually taste my food (I would eat a mini Reeses cup in about 6 bites), etc.

I found that I always ate too much because I would inhale the food at first, so I would get another helping or two to actually taste it. Slowing down made me satified with less and helped me to notice that fullness indicator creeping up. ;)

[Nancy LC]

No question about it being related to speed eating. :) If I were a slow eater it wouldn't be an issue. For instance, my sister talks so much I'm done long, long before she is. In fact, everyone is.

I have learned to work with my issue by taking what I think is a reasonable portion and eating it and setting a timer. Can't have seconds until the timer goes off. Another thing that works is to have a fizzy drink along with my meal. That seems to makes my stomach register fullness much faster.

[LC FP]

if your company was dumping chemicals into the lake, and the EPA came along and said, "Whoa, too many parts per million, fix it or be fined!"

All you would do is build a new discharge pipe and more tha double the outflow of lake water. Bingo, you just cut your parts per million in half.

US Steel almost built a new plant on the shore of Lake Erie on the PA/Ohio line. Aparently to have 2 discharge pipes, one in each state! Fortunately it wasn't built, and instead we import our steel from China, apparently.

And you really shouldn't make fun of Whoa like that...

[ysabella]

Seduced by snacks! But...they wear those tight, see-through little wrappers. They're asking for it! I swear!

;)

[Galliard]

I wish he'd examine low-carb eating behaviors versus SAD behaviors. That would be interesting. What got me was the one about people consuming buckets of stale popcorn -- he can claim that it's bucket size or Pavlovian cues or whatever -- but that's just plain carb addiction as far as I'm concerned -- yuck!

[Angeline]

Nancy, I find that eating a couple of cubes of cheese 30 minutes or so before a meal cuts down on my appetite hugely. Not quite sure however if I am creating a calorie deficiency however :)

And Galliard, I don't think the binging on pop corn was caused by addiction. They ate the pop corn because it was THERE, and they were preoccupied with watching the movie, so not really focusing on the pop corn. Mindless munching. We have all been guilty of that at one time or another. I know that I CANNOT have any munchies sitting next to me while watching tv, or at the computer or I'll go through the whole thing in record time. If I want something, I have to get up and go to the kitchen. That's usually enough to stop me, unless I actually am hungry.

I rarely get a case of the munchies anymore. It's mostly habit based anyway, and you can easily train yourself out of it.

[ProfGumby]

US Steel almost built a new plant on the shore of Lake Erie on the PA/Ohio line. Aparently to have 2 discharge pipes, one in each state! Fortunately it wasn't built, and instead we import our steel from China, apparently.

And you really shouldn't make fun of Whoa like that...

I didn't, the EPA did... :D

One pipe in each state? How creative!

[KvonM]

I look at it this way, if your company was dumping chemicals into the lake, and the EPA came along and said, "Whoa, too many parts per million, fix it or be fined!"

All you would do is build a new discharge pipe and more tha double the outflow of lake water. Bingo, you just cut your parts per million in half.


yeah sounds an AWFUL lot like bush's campaign debates where he said "air pollution has decreased over 50% in the last 4 years." kerry pointed out that air pollution hadn't decreased at all, the EPA had actually doubled the levels of "acceptable" pollutants in the air. that's kinda like raising the legal blood alcohol limit from .08 to .16 and then saying "see? we've cut drunk driving drastically!"


oh... and sorry to hijack the thread. my bad :(