We all know it’s unhealthy to mindlessly eat a large bag of crisps or a packet of sweets while on the laptop or watching television. We know choosing the fizzy drink or even the vitamin- and mineral- fuelled sweetened juice drink at the work canteen isn’t the best thing to do. We know avoiding salads and vegetables at mealtimes isn’t good for our health. Yet all these combined eating habits contribute to the reality that at least one in three people in Ireland is either overweight or obese.
The Nutrition and Health Foundation, which is sponsored by the food industry, recently invited American food psychologist and behavioural economist Prof Brian Wansink to speak about how we can change the food environment in our homes, canteens and food shops in ways that encourage people to eat more healthily, almost without realising it.
Wansink’s central idea is not to tell people what to do to lose weight but to lead them to the right decisions by designing their food environments cleverly. He has developed the Slim by Design movement, which offers restaurants, canteens and food outlets inexpensive design changes that make it “mindlessly” easy to eat healthier – and here’s the thing – while not cutting their profits.
“The way our homes, schools, restaurants, workplaces and grocery stores are set up predictably leads us to pick up cookies rather than apples,” says Wansink. “But, just as they’ve evolved to make us overeat, we can easily redesign them to make us slim.”
Win-win activism
So, what does he suggest? Well, for example, having fruit in attractive bowls next to the counters in shops and canteens rather than in wire or metal trays; placing the salad counter so that people have to walk around it before they get to the main food counter; putting milk and water at the front of the cool cabinet with fizzy drinks right at the back; and placing biscuits out of reach so the canteen staff have to serve them.
“It’s about win-win activism. We often choose things out of habit and we’ve found that people can change their habits just by putting different foods in front of them,” he says.
Most of the tips above were incorporated into 25,000 schools across the United States as part of the Smarter Lunchroom movement. Through this scheme, canteens filled out self-assessment cards to help them rate their improvements. Wansink has since developed self-assessment cards for grocery shops.
"There was more than 100 per cent increase in fruit sold by putting fresh fruit in an attractive bowl, a 41 per cent increase in milk drinking and a 17 per cent decrease in fizzy drinks consumption when they were changed around in the cooler," says Wansink, who is the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (2006). Such was the power of his message that he was given leave of absence from Cornell University to work as executive director of the American Centre for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
After developing the 2010 dietary guidelines and the food guide pyramid, he returned to Cornell where he is director of the Cornell food and brand lab.
A pragmatist, aware that the food industry’s prime objective is to make profit, Wansink says the strength of the Slim by Design movement is that most of the changes don’t cost and are quick to put in place.
“We encourage food directors’ competitive drive to fill out the Smarter Lunch assessment cards and my goal is for 70 per cent of all schools in the US to use them.”
Big, bad bean burrito
One of the problems, according to Wansink, is that we have poor associations with the word healthy. “One school canteen sold out their healthy burrito for the first time when they changed its name to “a big, bad bean burrito”, he says, Even at home, leaving precut vegetables and salads out for snacking while preparing the main meal encourages everyone to eat the healthy things mindlessly while waiting for their dinner, he suggests.
As well as his academic work, Wansink also works with various food producers and/or catering companies.
“We were approached by the owners of Chinese buffets who wanted to cut costs by reducing the food wastage. Almost 40 per cent of the food produced in buffets is thrown away. We suggested that they give people smaller plates – not too small or people will just fill up again – and have people sit farther from the buffet.”
After observing diners in almost 400 buffets across the US, Wansink’s researchers garnered some more interesting evidence. “We found that skinny people chew their food more. They are three times more likely to sit facing away from the buffet counter.”
And, crucially, the researchers observed that slimmer people scan the entire food choices before taking their plate while fatter people go straight for the plate and take the first item they see that they want. They also found that when you sit by a window, you are also less likely to order a dessert.
On a broader level, Wansink says we have destroyed people’s belief that they have control over what their families eat.
“We’ve told parents that there’s nothing they can do, that it’s impossible to fight big business or the fast-food industry, but while you can’t control 100 per cent of what your family eats, you can control about 70-75 per cent,” he says.
And, while you read through the tips in the panel on how to make your home “slim by design”, consider the research finding that people who have a messy kitchen eat about 44 per cent more snacks.
See slimbydesign.org
How to make your home slim by design
Serve salad and fruit before the main meal.
Serve your main dish from the cooker rather than placing food dishes on the table.
Use plates no bigger than about 20cm.
Turn the television [and laptops and phones] off while eating.
Have no more than two cans of fizzy drinks in your fridge.
Keep your kitchen counter organised and not scattered with food.
Keep fruit and vegetables in view at all times.
Leave easy-to-eat protein foods as snacks.
Keep all snack foods in one cupboard, not scattered throughout the kitchen.
Ensure the only food on your counter is fruit in a fruit bowl.
