WASHINGTON 鈥� Food placement can make a big difference in how much you eat.
blogger Sally Squires says that just seeing food or beverages can spark cravings, even if you weren鈥檛 feeling hungry before.
A team of researchers from Yale and St. Joseph鈥檚 universities studied where聽snack machines were placed in relation to the beverage machine at Google headquarters. 鈥淔or men, the closer these two things were — they doubled聽their snacking,鈥澛爏aid Squires.
鈥淔or women, snacking rose from 13 percent to 17 percent the closer these machines were to each other,”聽said Squires.
And evidently, the same holds true for your home.
Cornell University researcher Brian Wansink has been looking at cues in the聽environment that help us engage in mindless eating. He calculated the Body Mass Index for 500 families and asked聽what was on their kitchen counters.
鈥淲hat he found聽was that what you have on your kitchen counter helps predict how much you weigh,” she said.
“So families that had fresh fruit on the counter, and pretty much nothing else — they tended to weigh less. But those who had candy or soft drinks or chips, or other things on the counter that could be very tempting — they weighed more,鈥澛爏aid Squires.
Squires聽adds that one of the lessons, whether at work or at home, is 鈥渙ut of sight, out of mind.鈥� Keep food聽on the counter that will be healthy and tempting. That way, snacking will be聽a mindless healthy choice, instead of mindless eating.
