Small Plate, Big Fork?

I know it's been said before and it sounds weird, but eating off of a smaller plate can actually help you eat less! We are content with a meal when we think we're full, however our mind has a lot of power in that matter. In our mind, a proper meal usually looks like a full plate. Our mind can see a small plate full of food that looks like a meal, just as much as a large plate does. If we were to create a healthy sized meal on a smaller plate, and then dump the contents onto a large or normal size plate, the contents would no longer look like they make an entire meal. An illusion is created, the small plate full of food will look like it has more than the larger plate that is holding that same amount of food, but has some empty spaces. When you are filling your plate with food you are likely to fill up your whole plate, so the plate looks nice and doesn't have awkward empty gaps. By grabbing a smaller plate and serving yourself on that, when you fill the plate you won't have as much food, but the plate will still look appealing and comforting.
        Oddly enough, apparently eating your meal with a larger fork has that same effect as eating off of a smaller plate. Just as the look of our meal in front of us matters, the sight of our bite or fork full matters as well. Researchers at the University of Utah conducted a study (The Influence of Bite Size on Quantity of Food Consumed: A Field Study) testing the idea that a fork size could play just as big of a role in how much we eat as the size of the plate we eat off of.

The researchers used customers at an Italian restaurant to test this idea. They selected tables at random, giving the customers either uncommonly large forks, which were 20 percent larger than normal forks, or small forks, which were 20 percent smaller than the normal forks. Before bringing the food out to the customers, the researchers weighed the plate of food, and then weighed them once again when the customers were finished with their meals and the plates were returned.

Researchers found that overall the customers who ate with the unusually large forks left more on their plates at the end of the meal then those who ate with the smaller forks. But why is it that people often eat more when there's bigger portions in front of them, but eat less when they eat with a larger fork?

The researchers believe that people focus on the visuals while they are eating, like how quickly the food seems to be disappearing from their plate. A small fork makes it seem like you are progressing very slowly with eating your meal and as if you are not eating much. The diner feels like they are not consuming much of the food that is in front of them, meaning they do not think they are content or full and will continue eating.

That same logic can make sense of the small plate idea. If people have a bigger portion of food in front of them, when they eat it's going to look like they're making very little progress in eating the meal, and because it doesn't look like they are putting a dent in their meal until they eat a large portion of it. 

So remember, a small plate helps prevent you from overeating, but a big fork could help just as much!

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Chris Keating

Santa Clara University