Daily HealthBeat Tip

Bigger than your stomach.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this is HHS HealthBeat.

Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, and researcher Brian Wansink of Cornell University believes it�s a reason why Americans are gaining weight. He told a conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that things like big plates and supersized cups are dietary boobytraps � they fool us into eating more than we know.

In one experiment, graduate students were taught that people eat more when they have bigger bowls. Six weeks later, Wansink invited them to a Super Bowl party at which some grad students snacked from gallon bowls and others from half-gallon bowls. The gallon-bowl partiers ate more. But did they realize it? Wansink says:

"If you brought them together and said, `Look, on average, you guys took 55 percent more,� they � to a person � would say, `No, I didn�t. Maybe others did, but I didn�t.�"

Wansink says you can feel just as full on smaller cups and plates.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: July 18, 2005

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