You can certainly learn a lot from the movies. Historical epics paint a portrait of long-ago civilizations. Romance movies teach us dating techniques. Countless films teach us so much about the lives of artists, musicians, poets, writers, police officers, presidents, and many, many more. Plus, endless learning is to be had when watching documentaries.
With a new study, instead of looking at the screen, let’s divert our attention to the popcorn and soda that we enjoy at the movies. We pick up certain unhealthy eating habits at the movie theatre. We’ve already known for some time that portion sizes are too big at the movies — and that portion size is a major factor in the obesity epidemic in North America. However, this study is just too interesting to pass up.
Portion sizes apparently matter much more than the actual taste of food. Who cares if it’s terrible! We’ll keep eating it! The study in a nutshell — people ate 34% more stale popcorn if it was served in a large bucket rather than a medium-sized one.
In this piece of cinematic research, moviegoers were given either a medium or large tub of popcorn that was either fresh or two weeks old. The medium tub equaled 4.2 ounces and a large tub equaled 8.4 ounces. When the film finished, researchers measured how much popcorn was left in the tubs and asked the participants to describe the taste. The old popcorn was labeled “terrible” and “stale.”
Still, the people with big containers ate one-third more of it than those eating from the smaller bag. In other words, they ate it just because it was there — and a great quantity of it, too. This form of binge eating was, not surprisingly, worse for people with the fresh popcorn. People consumed 45% more from the larger containers than those from the medium-sized bags did.
They found that moviegoers were not aware that the huge amount of popcorn they ate was due to the size of the container. They speculate that these large portions, served by restaurants across the continent, may subconsciously tell people what a “normal” amount is, even though it is far more than a normal serving.
This may prompt people to eat unnecessarily large servings of food. This study proves that portion size trumps taste for many of us. “Large packages and containers can lead to overeating foods we do not even find appealing,” researchers wrote in a news release related to the study.
We need to tackle obesity in every way possible. One great way is to reduce portion sizes, or if we’re going to keep them big (because that is what a lot of people are used to doing), then we need to substitute bigger helpings of unhealthy foods with fruit and vegetables instead.
Here are a few rules of thumb to keep in mind when it comes to portion sizes:
–Deck of cards = one serving of fish, meat, or poultry –Your fist = one serving of vegetables or fruit –Tennis ball = half-cup of pasta, rice, or cereal –Baseball = one serving of fruit –Golf ball = one serving of dried fruit or nuts –Six dice = one serving of cheese
You can also learn to spot a serving visually. Three ounces of meat and a half-cup of many things equal one serving. You can measure things out visually and soon enough you’ll be able to spot a serving a mile away. You can also use the “plate method.” Fill it half with fruits and vegetables, and split the rest between lean meat/fish, whole grains, and low-fat dairy. This gives you some balance.
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Tags: healthy fruits, healthy vegetables, obesity
