Nudge yourself to a healthier life: plate size

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

This is a classic. Still, we thought that X-mas might just be the right occasion to write about Wansink's famous study of the effect that your plate's size has on your intake of calories.

Mindless eating
Brian Wansink is professor in consumer behavior and nutritional science. However, to most people outside of academia he is perhaps best known as the author of Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think (2006).

The multiple studies of food psychology and behavior reported by Wansink in Mindless eating carries a simple message: most of our eating behavior occurs through non-conscious processes and is thus also affected by cues, feats, and factors that we do not know about. In the language of Kahneman: most of our eating behavior is controlled by System 1.

Plate size
One of the features that affect how much we eat and hence also how many calories we consume is plate size. In a study carried out by Wansink and his team it was shown that moving from a 12-inch dinner plate to a 10-inch dinner plate leads people to serve and eat 22% less!*

Obviously, plate size shouldn't have any effect on an unconstrained and hyper-rational person. Such a person would have a plan as to how much to eat and know exactly how to carry this plan out to perfection.

Such ideal behavior is by no means unattainable. Heck, I once had great success monitoring my calorie intake through an electronic food diary called Madlog. The only problem was that my everyday life didn't allow be to give that much attention to closely monitor my intake. Weighing and measuring everything that I was eating throughout the day while doing my job and enjoying myself with my family turned out to be impossible. It just required too much effort and attention from system 2.

Consequently, as so many others, I need to find some simple and smart ways and heuristics to nudge myself to a healthier lifestyle... and when we can't manage to monitor the details of everything we eat, plate size does matter.

Why plate size matters
There are several causes to why the size of your plate matters. For one, the size of your plate effects the visual representation and following evaluation of how much food is on your plate.  

Of course, while this may cause you to put more food on your plate, it isn't sufficient for making you eat more. Unfortunately, your brain takes care of that - often even if you think about.

For one, food on a plate in front of you acts as a multi-level sensory cue for your brain to activate eating behavior and continue eating until you reach your physical limit. Behind this behavior lies the fact, that we didn't evolve at McDonalds, but in environments where scarcity of food was the fundamental human condition. Perhaps that explains why my Grand mom always says "eat while you can".   

Second, it takes a while before your stomach gets around sending that signal to your brain, that you're full. Some say that it takes as much as 15 minutes - and those 15 minutes can become very dangerous for your health.

Finally, there are social norms associated with leaving food on your plate. These might in turn be associated with norms of masculinity, politeness and norms of sustainability - it's masculine to eat much, it's not polite to leave food on the plate when you're a guest and it's just plain wrong to throw out food. All of these values enforce the norm of finishing your plate - especially when you think about it.

Do yourself a favor - nudge thyself
Now there is little chance that your brain or stomach will change. Further, the values coordinated through social norms may be to our liking and thus a matter of preference that it is not our job to judge or influence.

But fortunately, the size of our plates is under your control and thus you can nudge yourself. By simply finding some smaller plates you can affect the amount of food you eat. Also, you may do your guest a favor at the X-mas dinner - after all, it's unfortunate to kill your guests slowly by having norms of masculinity, politeness and sustainability finish them off.


Other blog entries on food and health:

How to grow your own nudge

Why nudging is better than the fat tax and other tools of the trade

A Nudge to walk around the Earth

Read more: 
Wansink, Brian (2006) Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Bantam Books.

* "The Perils of Plate Size: Waist, Waste, and Wallet (2008), Brian Wansink and Koert van Ittersum, Journal of Marketing (the paper is not yet published, but it may be downloaded here). 

NudgeNews, December, 2011

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Everyday quite a few articles, blogs and papers on Nudge and related issues are made available online. NudgeNews is our way of trying to facilitate a better understanding of nudging by giving you access and an overview.

Dec. 14, 2011

Nudge-initiative to nudge consumers toward sustainable practices

(consumer, sustainability, marketing)

Akshay R. Rao at the Carlsson School of Management, University of Minnesota is reported to have started up an initiative or consortium involving goverment agencies as well as companies aimed at boosting research in earth-friendly behavior and products:

Initiative to nudge consumers toward sustainable practices

Suggestion that UK government should counter market's use of behavioral economics with a ban

(consumer, alcohol consumption, marketing)

One of the issues that keeps coming up, is how to counter the industry's use of behavioral economics, especially when it leaves to severely harmful behavior. In this piece from The Telegraph Andrew M. Brown provides a balanced and sound argument for why we should consider to counter use of insights from behavioral economics by banning multi-buy deals in relation to alcohol consumption:  

Boozy Britain: your very good health?

Dec. 12, 2011

UK to nudge job creation

(work, incentive schemes)

Ed Davey, employment relations minister in the UK, has announced a plan for re-arranging incentives for employment providers that will have them pay more attention to whether they provide a sustainable job opportunity. Read more about it in the following two links:

A small job can boost job creation says Davey

'Nudge in the right direction' helpful for job creation  

Dec. 4, 2011

Nudging for healthier hospital cafeterias

(health, cafeterias, food)

A new study evaluates cafeterias in children's hospitals. Standards on how to present food and other nudges could be part of such evaluations in the future, says Dr. Lenard Lesser, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at UCLA's medical school and the lead author of the study.

UCLA study on healthy food at children's hospitals

Dec. 2, 2011

Smarter lunch rooms
(health, cafeterias, food)

Stargazette.com reports on a programme called "smarter lunch rooms" working in collaboration with Cornell. The article features little documentation, but some great ideas and illustrations of how one works with nudging healthier food choices in cafeterias and lunch rooms.

School lunchrooms strive to get smarter

Dec. 1, 2011

Nudging in the UK 
(nudge politics, problematic cases, car-theft)

A blog update on Marketing about Nudging in the UK by Nicola Clark seemingly based on a talk by Sam Nguyen from the Behavioural Insight Team at Marketing's Trends+ conference.   While there is no direct point in the update, it does feature three pieces of interest: (1) an attempt to get UK consumers to use more money with a nudge that seems samewhat unlikely to succeed; (2) the usual case of a  seemingly problematic case out of reach for the nudge-doctrine; and (3) a very interesting report of a social disclosure nudge in car-theft security.

Nudge theory or fudge theory?

Challenge: Happy Birthday nudge!

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

I don't think that my sister have ever paid serious attention to anything I've said in my life.

Not until last Sunday at my niece's Birthday, that is.

The birthday nudge
My sister works with the Danish Cancer Society - the same organization (but different section) that we are working with through the Danish Nudging Network. Although I've once told her about nudging, I guess it's there that she has picked up some ideas.

Thus, last Sunday at my niece's Birthday party, my sister suddenly makes the announcement at the table that she has made a little nudge-experiment.

What nobody had noticed was that there were two different varieties of Birthday buns served in each their basket: one variety with sugar, one variety without. Ultimately nobody had noticed, and thus the result was that 50% less sugar was eaten, since pick of bread basket was more or less random (my sister switched bread baskets once in a while during the party).

Is it a nudge?
Whether this is a nudge depends on a few decisions. Thaler and Sunstein's definition of a nudge doesn't say explicitly whether adding a choice-option rules out a nudge. Thus one has to go to the background theory of behavioral economics to get it right. According to this, adding an option is a nudge if it influences real world behavior, but leaves the ideal agent of homo economicus unaffected.  

Ultimately, the Birthday buns manage the fundamental requirements. Adding a sugarless variety of buns left the standard singleton-choice of buns with sugar feasible. Also, there were no cost-benefit adjustment attached in any way to the intervention - not even of the social kind, since my sister didn't inform us about the addition of a new choice.

Rational Birthday party challenge
But the decisive question is: would an ideal agent be influenced by the addition of a choice?

Well, on the one hand he wouldn't have any information about the sugarless variety to begin with. That seems to leave a Birthday party of rational agents to end up with eating 50% less sugar given their imperfect information and the assumption that choice of bread basket is made at random.  

But is this the right baseline to compare observed effect with when evaluating whether the intervention ultimately qualifies as a nugde?

I want to pose this as a challenge to you readers out there: is the Birthday Bun Nudge, really a nugde?

Clues
I'll provide my answer later on. For now, I leave you with the following clues.

(1) Ideal decision makers have taste-buds just like everyone else, but they also have perfect recall.
(2) At the rational birthday party ideal decision makers have imperfect information, but are also capable of learning.
(3) People did not eat the same number of Birthday buns. Some ate 1, most ate 2 or 3, and a few ate 4.
(4) My sister was willing to answer any question honestly.

NudgeNews Nov. 20, 2011

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Everyday quite a few articles, blogs and papers on Nudge and related issues are made available online. NudgeNews is our way of trying to facilitate a better understanding of nudging by giving you access and an overview.


Nov. 20, 2011.


food, public health, obesity. The Atlantic reports on the UK Government decision to disband advisory group on obesity issues, picking up very well, how nudging easily may become a political smokescreen for inaction.   

UK Government Quietly Disbands Advisory Group on Obesity Issues

Interestingly the reporter also decides to refer the reader directly to a discussion in BMJ (good journalism is rare these days!). You may find them here:

Is nudge an effective public health strategy to tackle obesity? No by Geof Rayner, honorary research fellow, and Tim Lang, professor of food policy

Is nudge an effective public health strategy to tackle obesity? Yes by Adam Oliver, senior lecturer

growing your own nudge, food. Finally, we've decide to bring you this story by Tara Conolly about having school children grow their own vegetables, since it ecchoes and earlier post we had how to grow your own nudge :

Forks and Tracy Elementary Get New Outdoor 'Classrooms'

  

How to grow your own nudge

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Credit: Patou

Children, vegetables and fruit
The last couple of years I've heard several professionals say that the key to getting kids to enjoy healthy food is having them participate in preparing dinner. The idea seems to be that by doing this it will make them more open to trying out new kinds of food and thus also - so the argument seems to go - be more positive towards preparing and eating healthy food.

To me this idea seems to be somewhat naïve. In its strongest version I take the argument to be that some sort of effect resembling the endownment effect should be established by the process of food preparation. But why on Earth should this only pertain to potatoes and not to french fries?


When I was a kid...
When I was a kid I had chickens. That meant that every morning I could eat a great tasting soft-boiled egg. We also grew potatoes in the garden... and apples, carrots, pears, plums, strawberries and much more. Oh boy, did I eat a lot of fruit, vegetables... and eggs!

Today I struggle to get my 7 year old son to eat fruit, eggs and other healthy foods. I'm part of that big army of parents repeating every night "eat your vegetables" and "taste this fruit". But despite the fact that we have access to more varities of exotic fruits than ever, it doesn't seem that kids find it easier to enjoy the taste of fruit, vegetables... and eggs.

Now, of course I have tried regulation. You have to eat so-and-so before you can watch cartoons! But for some obvious reasons this doesn't really succeed in making him enjoy his fruits and vegetables. I've also tried the "sticks and carrots" approach to the sticks of carrots. If you eat so-and-so, you'll get (or don't get) this-and-this. But that doesn't really seem to have improved my goal (i.e. making him enjoy healthy food), since it only makes it a means to his ends.

In sum, the situation that I share with an army of parents calls for a nudge. That nudge doesn't seem to be one having kids preparing their own food, but rather having them grow it. That's right. Tonight I'll say:

"Son. When I was a kid we grew our own nudges. I think it's time for you to do the same."

After all, while you can grow potatoes, you can't grow french fries. Now I just have to get find some bags of top soil and carry it to the 4th floor!