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The Gorge-Yourself Environment
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By ERICA GOODE
Published: July 22, 2003
From giant sodas to supersize burgers to all-you-can-eat buffets, America's approach to food can be summed up by one word: Big.
Plates are piled high, and few crumbs are left behind. Today's blueberry muffin could, in an earlier era, have fed a family of four.
But social norms change. Free love has given way to safe sex. Smokers have become pariahs. The gin fizz and the vodka gimlet have yielded to the mojito and the cosmopolitan.
Now many health experts are hoping that, in the service of combating an epidemic of obesity, the nation might be coaxed into a similar cultural shift in its eating habits.
Traditionally, the prescription for shedding extra pounds has been a sensible diet and increased exercise. Losing weight has been viewed as a matter of personal responsibility, a private battle between dieters and their bathroom scales. But a growing number of studies suggests that while willpower obviously plays a role people do not gorge themselves solely because they lack self-control.
Health experts and consumer advocates point to the studies of portion size and other environmental influences in arguing that fast-food chains and food manufacturers must bear some of the blame for the country's weight problem.
''The food industry has used portion sizes and value marketing as very effective tools to try to increase their sales and profits,'' said Margo Wootan, the director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group financed by private foundations.
Trial lawyers met in Boston last month to discuss legal approaches to obesity, including lawsuits against fast-food chains and food manufacturers on grounds like false advertising, failure to provide labeling about caloric content or even fostering food addiction.
At least seven such lawsuits have been filed, with varying success, said John F. Banzhaf III, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University. Professor Banzhaf, who led the way in litigation against tobacco companies, is now channeling similar energy into reforming fast food
''The most interesting finding was that the price changes were whopping in effect,'' compared with the labels, Dr. French said. Dropping the price of the low-fat snacks by even a nickel spurred more sales. In contrast, orange stickers signaling low-fat content or cartoons promoting the low-fat alternatives had little influence over which snacks were more popular.
Packaging can change the amount people consume. Dr. Wansink and his colleagues have showed that, fooled by a visual illusion, people drink more from short, wide glasses than thinner, taller ones, but they think they are drinking less.
Having more choices also appears to make people eat more. In one study, Dr. Barbara Rolls, whose laboratory at Pennsylvania State University has studied the effects of the environment on eating, found that research subjects ate more when offered sandwiches with four different fillings than they did when they were given sandwiches with their single favorite filling.
''Restaurants are using larger dinner plates, bakers are selling larger muffin tins, pizzerias are using larger pans and fast-food companies are using larger drink and French fry containers,'' Dr. Young wrote in a paper published last year in The American Journal of Public Health.
Even the cup holders in automobiles have grown larger to make room for giant drinks, Dr. Young noted.
She and other experts think it is no coincidence that obesity began rising sharply in the United States at the same time that portion sizes started increasing. But cause and effect cannot be proved. And the food industry rejects the idea of a connection. Mr. Anderson of the restaurant association, for example, says that lack of exercise, poor eating habits and genetic influences are largely responsible for Americans' struggle with extra fat
Very young children, studies suggest, are relatively immune to the pressures that huge food seems to impose on adults. Three-year-olds served three different portion sizes of macaroni and cheese for lunch on three different days, Dr. Rolls and her colleagues discovered, ate the same amount each time. Five-year-olds, however, already showed signs of succumbing to adult overindulgence, eating more when more was put in front of them.
Researchers have yet to cement the link between larger portions and a fatter public. But add up the studies, Dr. Rolls and other experts say, and it is clear Americans might have more success slimming down if plates were not quite so large and a tempting snack did not await on every corner.
Obviously, people have responsibility for deciding what to eat and how much, Dr. Rolls said. ''The problem is,'' she said, ''they're not very good at it.