Why you eat a ton of foods that don't even taste that good?
The answer a lot of the time is opportunity.
This is probably not that mind blowing, but the more food you have access to without moving the more you will eat.
In a study I read about in the book Mindless Eating, scientists did a pretty tricky experiment involving movie popcorn that really drives this point home.
Great book
The unknowing participants were given a free tub of unlimited popcorn (as many refills as they wanted), but the tubs were either large or small. There was a catch with the popcorn though.
It tasted terrible.
Scientifically terrible. It was literally engineered in the lab to be awful. The popcorn was so stale it squeaked when you chewed it. The popcorn was so nasty people asked for their money back and they hadn't even paid for it!
At the end of the experiment they weighed how much popcorn sac person ate. They also asked questions about hunger, boredom, and other questions we associate with overeating.
The ones who ate the most, across the board, were people who had the larger tubs of popcorn. Other factors did not matter.
They did this experiment all over the country, with all ages, all races, and the results were the same.
The ones with the larger tubs ate 53% more popcorn and had 21 more hand dips into the tub (weird I know). The extra popcorn eaten came out to be around 173 calories more per person.
173 extra calories a day would pack on an extra 18 pounds of fat per year on you. Pretty significant. And this was with popcorn that was nasty! Imagine if it was something delicious.
The scariest part is that not one of the participants thought that was the reason they ate more. It didn't even register in their brain that could be a cause.
So chances are, you fall victim to that too.
Start downsizing! Use smaller plates, smaller bowls, smaller cups.
