Eating with a large fork may help you to consume less, says Time.com, and the reason may be related to what we see on the plates in front of us.
The University of Utah in Salt Lake City enlisted an Italian restaurant to help with its study, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Random diners at the eatery were given either larger- or smaller-than-usual forks, and then the researchers weighed each diner’s post-consumption plate to discover how much each subject ate. The results found that diners with the larger forks ate less than those with the smaller forks.
“Diners focus on the visual cue of whether they are making any dent in the amount of food on their plates,” the study read. “Diners feel they are not making much of a dent in consuming their food and, hence, satisfying their hunger [with the smaller fork]. This, in turn, focuses diners to put in more effort (e.g., more forkfuls) toward satiating their hunger. As a result, diners with smaller forks consume more food than those using larger forks.”
When the researchers studied subjects who were just snacking — not eating a full meal, as the restaurant-goers were — the results were the opposite: Those with the larger forks ate more. Without an end goal of finishing a meal, the subjects may have eaten more just because they were in the midst of a routine.
Read more here.
