The Complex Psychology of Holiday Eating

15 Nov The Complex Psychology of Holiday Eating

Hara hachi bu for the holidays.

Are you the eat-now-think-about-the-calories-in-January type? Happy holidays! If not, read on for what’s happening in the behavioral science of eating. Not all of it good news.

“The French have their modest portions and taboo against seconds. The people of Okinawa, one of the longest-lived and healthiest populations in the world, practice a principle they call hara hachi bu: Eat until you are 80 percent full.

“This is a sensible idea, but also easier said than done: How in the world do you know when you’re 80 percent full? You’d need to be in closer touch with your senses than many Americans at the table have become. . . . Americans typically eat not until they’re full (and certainly not until they’re 80 percent full) but rather until they receive some visual cue from their environment that it’s time to stop: the bowl or package is empty, the plate is clean, or the TV show is over. . . . By comparison the French, who seem to attend more closely to all the sensual dimensions of eating, also pay more attention to the internal cues telling us we feel full.” (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food).

Here’s a collection of studies on eating according to visual cues—and how to game our natural tendencies.

“It’s easier to change your environment than it is to change your mind,” says Brian Wansink, director of most of the studies in the link, and soon to be formerly of Cornell University. Recently he’s come under fire, with 15 of his studies retracted, and dozens more called into question.

Too bad. Like Fox Mulder, we want to believe we can fight the battle of the bulge without needing a lot of will power. We’ve cited Wansink’s studies on many occasions, and actually used them for better eating: apples on the counter; apple pie out of sight; buffet items scoped and mentally chosen before lining up and loading up.

Now that so many of the studies have been discredited, does that mean food choice architecture—like smaller plates, and new wine glasses for every wine pour, and leaving the pile of candy wrappers to keep track of how many pieces have been eaten—won’t work? Is there a science placebo effect: If it worked when we thought it was solid science, will it not work now that we know the studies were flawed? If there’s a study about that somewhere, let us know.

In the meantime, we are thinking about drowning our sorrow in a whole pecan pie. (Bad.) Or moving to Paris, where food is expensive, portions are small, and disapproving looks will guilt us into eating less. (Much, much better.)