A variety of foods in a meal can make you eat more. Over a year, this may cause you add almost 6 pounds in extra weight. The experiments show that including lots of different foods in a meal fools you into having an optical illusion so the overall meal portion size seems smaller than in reality.
The brain’s failure at correctly identifying a serving size can be partially to blame for obesity epidemic crisis. Researchers emphasize that healthy eating still implies having a variety of foods but they do warn about our eyes tricking us.
According to the University of Minnesota press release, variety makes people involuntarily pour larger portions. Given that people tend to eat up what they serve themselves, the findings about the brain’s inability to judge how much food is served make a lot of sense.
Identical food typically looks bigger in size than different foods put in one plate. Researchers tested their findings on 150 students. They were shown a standard portion of identically colored sweets. When asked to pour the same portion of differently colored sweets, the students were more likely to pour more. At average, they increased the size by 10 percent.
Source of the image: flickr.com/photos/jingdianjiaju2.
