Eat Less with Larger Snack Sizes
I have a weakness for chips and other salty snacks. Barbeque-flavored chips, cheezy poofs, salt and vinegar chips, tortilla chips... you name it, I will buy it, take it to a friend's house and then leave it there after I've had some. In the rare occasions that I have purchased one of those bags for my house, it has taken me forever to open it because I know it's a temptation I don't need.
Why am I telling you this? Because I just discovered there's a study related exactly to this very thing (there's a study on everything, isn't there?).
CBCnews is reporting that "Calorie-counters may not be helping themselves when they buy snacks such as cookies, chips and candies in smaller packages, according to a study on consumer behaviour."
In the soon to be released October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, people who purchase smaller packages believe they are eating less, but are in fact, eating more than if they had bought a regular-sized portion.
According to the story:
As part of the study, 140 university students watched a television program with either small or large packages of potato chips set beside them.
Prior to the experiment, one group was made to think of their body image, while the other wasn't.
Each of these groups were split into two other groups — one that was given a bowl containing two large bags of chips, and one that was given a bowl containing nine small bags.
In both conditions, the overall quantity of chips was about the same, around 400 grams.
In the group that had been primed to think of body image, the researchers found the group given the small packages was twice as likely to open a bag of chips compared to the group given the large packages.
The group that was given the small packages also ate about twice the amount the group that was given a large package of chips.
See? I'm not totally crazy. There is a method to my madness. Those small packages are insidious because you feel like you haven't eaten anything at all so why not have another or finish the whole thing off?
(AP Photo)
