Smart Woman: Colored Plates May Affect Your Eating Portions
By: Lane Stone
Updated: December 6, 2011
Can changing the color of your plate keep you from eating more?
Some researchers say yes!
When I look at that pasta, this portion seems significantly larger to me, yet the serving sizes were the same.
It's an illusion, a trick the eye plays when the food and plate are the same color.
A study in the journal of consumer research found people served themselves more food, if their plate matched their food.
We asked dietitian Roberta Anding and Yvonne Donaldson to help us do a test.
Yvonne served two scoops of spaghetti with red marinara sauce onto a white plate and 2 onto a plate with red.
"On the first plate, the colored plate, the food gets lost, there's no contrast there, so the food blends in," said Anding.
But the white plate made the same serving of red pasta look bigger because of the contrast.
"I consciously made an effort for both plates to be equal. So the fact this looks different from this one is a clear demonstration of the white plate and what it does," said Donaldson.
Pasta with green pesto sauce on a white plate looked larger than on the green flowered plate.
The theory is: The more contrast, the less you're likely to eat.
It's more psychologically satisfying.
Is there a color that helps you eat less? Anding says its the blue.
"If you really want to watch your weight maybe what you should do is look for the bluest plate you have in your cupboard and use that because that's the least appealing blend with food, said Anding"
No blue dishes? Then just make sure your food doesn't match your plate!
Some researchers say yes!
When I look at that pasta, this portion seems significantly larger to me, yet the serving sizes were the same.
It's an illusion, a trick the eye plays when the food and plate are the same color.
A study in the journal of consumer research found people served themselves more food, if their plate matched their food.
We asked dietitian Roberta Anding and Yvonne Donaldson to help us do a test.
Yvonne served two scoops of spaghetti with red marinara sauce onto a white plate and 2 onto a plate with red.
"On the first plate, the colored plate, the food gets lost, there's no contrast there, so the food blends in," said Anding.
But the white plate made the same serving of red pasta look bigger because of the contrast.
"I consciously made an effort for both plates to be equal. So the fact this looks different from this one is a clear demonstration of the white plate and what it does," said Donaldson.
Pasta with green pesto sauce on a white plate looked larger than on the green flowered plate.
The theory is: The more contrast, the less you're likely to eat.
It's more psychologically satisfying.
Is there a color that helps you eat less? Anding says its the blue.
"If you really want to watch your weight maybe what you should do is look for the bluest plate you have in your cupboard and use that because that's the least appealing blend with food, said Anding"
No blue dishes? Then just make sure your food doesn't match your plate!
