Subconcious Behaviour Could Be Making You Fat

obese people are on the whole unaware of their negative behaviour patterns

New research coming from Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab shows that overweight men and women have radically different eating patterns to normal weight individuals. Their fascinating research involved studying how obese people behave in ‘All You Can Eat’ Chinese restaurant buffets. For example obese diners are far more likely to sit facing the food buffet than normal weight individuals and on top of this they are statistically more likely to sit closer to the food. The other observations that the researchers noted were that the obese people tended to help themselves to food immediately rather than browsing round of the whole buffet before choosing what to eat.

The researchers also noted that the obese people were much more likely to take bigger plates and not use chopsticks. In fact less than ten percent of overweight people used chopsticks whereas a quarter of normal weight individuals chose them. The advantage of using chopsticks is that you are more likely to eat slowly and other studies have shown that eating slowly normally means that you eat less.

Brian Wanink who led the study on these eating patterns said that what is fascinating is that the obese people are on the whole unaware of their negative behaviour patterns. They don’t realise that they are consciously facing the buffet, eating faster, sitting closer to the food and so on. Brian Wanink has published a book on his research called ‘Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.’

For this research eleven Chinese restaurants were studied and over 200 individuals were observed eating. A whole range of different sizes of men and women were recorded as they helped themselves to food and the study was limited to non Asian participants.

The study is interesting because it shows how little behaviour modifications can help us not to eat too much. Next time you are faced with an ‘All You Can Eat’ buffet why not try sitting as far away as possible from it, observing all the food before choosing what to eat, eating slowly and if they are on offer why not use chopsticks?