I had an interesting day yesterday, I went to a birthday lunch/party at my friend Kathy‘s house.

We all had “normal” amounts/servings at of salad, quiche and a smallish dinner roll. No big deal.

When seconds were offered, it occurred to me later that we were all taking part in a real life “Mindless eating” experiment.

(Good NY Times articles on “Mindless eating” experiments.)

Test Kitchen Tricks

Seduced by Snacks

I was offered seconds first… by virtue of where I was sitting. The hostess (who is thin and always has been… but I KNOW she watches it…) had lots of flowers and candles etc on the table (it was beautiful) and the platters of food were moved back into the kitchen after we were served the first round. She has a fairly large house, and we were in what might be called the “The Great Room” and the kitchen, dinning room and living room are all in one room…. So anyway, she is at the counter in the kitchen and says, “Denise, would you like some more quiche?” and I thought for a second, because, I can ALWAYS eat seconds and it was good and there were two kinds and I hadn’t tried the 2nd kind and I wasn’t exactly stuffed… but I said no.

And every person after me said no, too. But I realized, later, that I was sort of the trend setter and there was this sort of expectation of “What is she going to do?”… and if I had said, “You know… It was really good, can I try just a small sliver of the ham quiche?” I BET most every other person would have said yes to another sliver, too.

Also, I’m just realizing that Kathy calling across the kitchen counter, “Do you want more?” made it way easier to say no than if she had brought me the quiche and asked, “Do you want more?” as she was serving a slice to my plate.

So, it is interesting to note her method of offering more vs. “a food pusher” method. I’m very sure that she said something like, “Are you sure?” and it was really easy to say, “Yes. I’m sure.” (And I never felt that I was being pushed to eat more… just politely asked. Kathy didn‘t really have a big emotional investment in me having 2nds. She has two teen boys… She doesn‘t NEED me to eat the quiche.)

And at first, I thought, it was ME and where I am in life, and I just have lots of will power right this moment… but a BIG part of it was being asked from 8 feet away and not being able to see the quiche. I’ll bet that if she had asked while having a slice on a serving fork, hovering over my plate… I would have said, “yes”. And probably some of it was her lack of emotional investment in me having seconds helped. She really didn’t care one way or the other and it wasn’t going to hurt her feelings if I passed.

Also, Kathy had foil wrapped chocolates decorating the table… but never said anything like, “Have some of the chocolate…” and we all forgot that it was there.

It is interesting to look it as from an eating experiment and the way a “naturally thin” person “naturally” serves food. And how we all ate and I KNOW I would have eaten differently with the EXACT same food served in a different way.

But, it was all very interesting… and I don’t think that I would have thought about all the ways that I/we were encouraged to eat less if I hadn’t just finished that book. And who knows how many other “cues” I missed!!… but very all interesting… and how in the past… I would have chalked it all up to will power.

But I bet, we could replay that whole lunch and Kathy could have done things differently and I could have said “yes” to seconds… and the whole group could have eaten twice as much… and we wouldn’t have known why… just that we didn’t have much will power that day.