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Is your kitchen making you fat? It could be. Brian Wansink, PhD, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab and author of the new book Slim by Design, visited hundreds of homes to determine how our favorite room in the house is also the most dangerous. Read on for the most common kitchen fat traps—and the weight-loss tips to prevent them.
FAT TRAP: You store cereal on the counter.
Women who had just one box of breakfast cereal out in the kitchen weighed a whopping 21 pounds more than their neighbor who didn't. "We eat what we see, not what we don't," writes Wansink, who says he can roughly predict a person's weight by the food she has sitting out. But more than potato chips or crackers, cereal is the worst culprit because we see it as a relatively healthy food, Wansink says, which leads to often grossly underestimating exactly how much of it we're eating.
Weight-loss tip: Wansink recommends keeping only keep a fruit bowl on display. And for good reason: His research shows people who follow that rule weigh seven pounds less.
FAT TRAP: You keep sweets in a glass jar or wrap leftover pizza in plastic wrap.
Chances are, when you see a treat wrapped in aluminum foil, you're not going to start salivating for it. In one experiment Wansink did after a party, he stored half the leftover food in clear plastic wrap or clear plastic containers, and the other half in aluminum foil or opaque containers. "Within two days, all the clearly wrapped leftovers were gone," he says. "Most nonvisible leftovers were still there 10 days later."
Weight-loss tip: Store healthy foods, like cut-up vegetables and cooked quinoa, in clear containers that you'll immediately see—and keep the bad stuff concealed.
FAT TRAP: You open your pantry to find chocolate! Tortilla chips! Trail mix!
How foods are arranged in your cupboard and fridge really matters: "You're three times more likely to eat the first food you see in the cupboard than the fifth one," Wansink says.
Weight-loss tip: Make sure to push the unhealthy foods as far to the back as possible, and keep the wholesome ones upfront.
FAT TRAP: Your dishware is too big.
When you eat from a small 10-inch plate, the recommended 2-ounce serving of pasta looks plentiful, but on a standard 12-inch one? Measly. "So we serve ourselves another spoonful," says Wansink. The same goes when serving a dish from a large bowl: People dished out an extra 17 percent from a 3-quart bowl versus a 2-quart bowl, Wansink says, simply because "the bigger bowl makes us almost unconsciously think it's normal, appropriate, and reasonable to serve more, so we do."
Weight-loss tip: Be mindful to eat off salad plates and serve food from smaller serving dishes.
FAT TRAP: The color is all wrong.
According to Wansink's research, when people served themselves on plates that matched the color of their food, they piled on 18 percent more calories than those with opposite-colored plates.
Weight-loss tip: When you're eating white carbs—pasta, rice, mashed potatoes—skip the white dishware.
By: Lindsay Funston
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