If you want to indulge in Christmas dinner without going overboard, there’s a helpful way to keep your appetite in check. Sit as far away from the food as possible.
“The difference in ease of access need only be minor, but the easier food is to reach, the more likely it is to end up in your mouth,” writes Rachel Herz, author of “Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food” (W.W. Norton & Company), out Dec. 26.
Research has shown that people eat more candy the closer it is to them on their desk, eat more ice cream when the container lid is open and pour more water for themselves if a full pitcher is right beside them.
“There is no doubt about it,” Herz writes. “The shorter the distance between us and food, the more of it we eat.”
Herz explores multiple reasons for why we eat certain foods and how our eating habits affect us. Listening to music, dining with friends and even watching your favorite football team lose a game all have an effect on our approach to food. Here’s a taste of the findings from her book . . .
Sweets make you powerful
Eating too much sugar over a long period of time can be bad for you, but in the short term sugar helps us withstand larger amounts of pain.
A 2003 McGill University study showed that college students asked to submerge their arms in cold water could withstand it for 80 seconds if they were simultaneously tasting something sweet — 18 percent longer than those without sugar. A separate neuroimaging study conducted at Gunma University in Japan found that people tasting sugar had “greater tolerance for pain, less emotional agitation, and less . . . pain perception,” due to the endorphins triggered by the sweet flavor.
Having a sweet tooth might even mean you’re a better person than most. A joint study conducted by North Dakota State University and Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania found that “people who reported higher preferences for sweet foods were more cooperative, kinder and exhibited more altruistic behaviors” and also found that “after just a brief taste of a sweet food . . . people felt that they became more agreeable and also volunteered more of their time to help someone else.”
Your love of hot sauce will extend your life
The hot-pepper burn that triggers certain receptors in the mouth is known as capsaicin. Recent research has shown that the receptor that binds to capsaicin, causing us to feel the fire, “also shuts down pain-sensing neurons,” Herz writes. The element can even help people live longer.
A study this year from the University of Vermont’s medical school followed over 16,000 people over an almost 19-year period and found that those who regularly eat red chili peppers had a 13 percent lower mortality rate than non-chili eaters. In addition, according to Herz, “Consumption of red-hot chili is linked to a lower incidence of obesity, cancer, respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease.” Capsaicin has also been found to have “antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties.”
Some people can’t ‘taste’ cilantro
Ever wonder why some people love the taste of cilantro, while others insist it tastes like soap? The answer lies inside our noses.
Human beings have between 350 and 400 different smell receptors that are equivalent to a personal odor profile. Each of us has a different combination of these than everyone else, resulting in a sense of smell that is uniquely our own.
People who hate cilantro are missing the receptors that process its “herbaceous notes,” leaving only its soapy quality. Since what we taste is highly affected by our sense of smell, this leaves people without those receptors smelling only the soapiness.
Bringing your own bag to the supermarket could make you fatter
A collaborative study from scientists at Duke and Harvard universities examined the behavior of California shoppers from 2007 and 2009. They found that people who bring their own bag to the supermarket of their own accord — as opposed to those who do so because they’ll be financially penalized by the store for using plastic or paper — not only bought more organic food but also purchased more high-calorie treats.
The reason for this is called “licensing.” Someone who brings their own bag perceives that they’ve done a good deed, so they subconsciously feel entitled to a reward, which often takes the form of high-calorie, unhealthy dessert treats. So if you’re bringing your own bag to protect the environment, remember to protect your health as well, and be mindful of what you put in your cart.
You eat more when you dine with a group
There are few things more satisfying than dining with friends.
Unfortunately, there are also fewer things more fattening.
“The factor that most influences how much we eat is the number of people we’re with,” writes Herz. “The more people we eat with, the more food we consume.”
Research at Sam Houston State University in 1992 showed that how much we eat rises directly with the number of friends or family we’re eating with. (The increases are smaller if dining with strangers.)
“Meals eaten with one other person are 33 percent larger than those eaten alone,” Herz writes, noting that this keeps increasing with the number of fellow diners. With three other people, meals are 58 percent larger; five others, 70 percent. At seven or more, we eat 96 percent more than when we eat alone.
While there are several reasons for this, most prominent is that when we eat with large groups, we have more food in front of us, and we dine for longer periods of time. So people looking to shed pounds might want to occasionally shed the company as well.
Pregnant women can turn their unborn babies into foodies
Our sense of taste blossoms in the womb, as we begin to detect the scent of our mother’s food in her amniotic fluid.
Research shows that smells as varied as garlic, alcohol or carrots detected while in utero lead to a preference for these tastes after birth. And when a mother consumes a wide variety of foods during pregnancy, “her child becomes familiar with these aromas and therefore more welcoming of foods that carry them,” Herz writes. This increases the chance that the child will eventually “choose a more varied and healthier diet.”
German research in the 1990s also showed that the taste preferences we develop as babies linger on when we’re adults. In the study, respondents who had eaten a popular vanilla-flavored formula as infants were more than twice as likely to prefer the taste of vanilla than people who had never consumed the substance.
Noise on an airplane makes food taste bland
Scientists have determined that listening to high-frequency notes enhances sweetness, low notes bring out bitterness and loud noise makes food blander. This is known as “sensation transference,” and the last example partly explains why airplane food is so tasteless.
“The ambient rumble inside an airplane cabin is typically about 75-85 decibels,” writes Herz. “This noise volume reduces the [perception of] saltiness and sweetness of whatever you’re eating, on top of which the low air pressure of high-altitude flying constricts your nasal passages, so less aroma flows through them.”
This also explains why tomato juice is so bizarrely popular among flyers. While salt, sweet and sour tastes are reduced by loud noise, the savory sensation known as umami is increased. Tomato juice that contains monosodium glutamate (MSG) fits the umami profile, making it more desirable on planes, and could also provide inspiration for better airplane food. If airlines would serve foods with a high umami profile, such as “tomato, Parmesan cheese, mushrooms and bacon,” your in-flight meal would taste a lot better.
The reason for the sound/taste interplay is that a facial nerve, which carries taste sensations to the brain, crosses through a membrane in our middle ear. “This means that what you hear,” Herz writes, “directly affects your sense of taste.”
Music affects the taste of wine
Around 20 years ago, a Scottish professor named Adrian North made a fascinating discovery about wine sales at a local supermarket.
“When French accordion music played in the store, French wines outsold German wines by five to one,” Herz writes, “and when German [Bavarian beer hall] music was playing, twice as many bottles of German wine as French wine were sold.”
North also found that music alters people’s sensation of taste. In a separate test, he found that certain classical pieces made one type of wine seem “subtle and refined,” while upbeat dance music caused the same wine to be described as “zingy and refreshing.”
“North’s findings result from the moods, ideas and mindsets that certain types of music evoke,” Herz writes. “When you hear refined music, you are reminded of elegance and your perception of wine then leans that way too.”
Viewing a disgusting image can help control long-term cravings of unhealthy food
Ever get food poisoning from, say, a bad piece of pork, and find that you can never enjoy pork again? Food aversion can also be used to cut high-calorie foods from your diet.
An experiment at the University of Colorado in 2015 showed that when participants were shown “a disgusting image, such as a dirty toilet” and then shown a picture of ice cream or pizza, an aversion to those foods lasted for days, and even extended to other similar foods. So if a certain high-calorie food has you in its grip, you could reduce your intake by looking at an unpleasant image before you indulge. You’ll be disgusted, but also, ultimately, thinner.
Following a losing football team could cause you to gain weight
According to market research conducted during the 2004-2005 NFL season, when a football team loses, its fans eat anywhere from 16 to 28 percent more high-calorie, high-fat foods the next day than usual. When the team wins, its fans eat 9 to 16 percent less unhealthy food than normal.
Both winning and losing — even by proxy — cause chemical reactions in the body. Elation is an appetite suppressant because the brain produces higher levels of serotonin and dopamine, increasing our energy, causing us to require less food. When our team loses, the opposite occurs.
In other words, if you’re looking to lose weight, this might not be the best time to root for the Giants.