Thinking thin isn’t just avoiding the dessert menu — it’s about sitting at high-top tables instead of booths.
Where you sit when dining out has a serious effect on your waistline, explains Professor Brian Wansink, director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab and author of the new book “Slim By Design” (William Morrow).
Wansink and his colleagues visited 27 restaurants across the country, mapping the layout of the restaurant and tracking what diners ate.
His studies found that people order healthier foods if they sit by a window or in a well-lit area. People at uncomfortable high-top tables favor salads and buy fewer desserts, since it’s harder to slouch or spread out.
Conspicuous consumption, or eating in an area where other diners can see you, seems to curtail overeating.
“Seeing the sunlight, people or trees outside might make you more conscious of how you look, might make you think about walking or might prompt a green salad,” Wansink writes.
And, yes, there is such a thing as a fat table.
Those farthest from the door eat the fewest salads and are 73 percent more likely to order dessert. People at darkly lit tables or booths eat fattier foods. Diners within two tables of the bar drink on average three more beers or mixed drinks (per tables of four) than a group just one table farther away.
TV is the enemy of diets — the nearer you are to the screen, the more fried food you’ll consume. You’re distracted and more likely to get seconds and refills.
Also, “The darker it is, the more ‘invisible’ you might feel, the less easy it is to see how much you’re eating and the less conspicuous or guilty you might feel,” Wansink writes.
Wansink does admit that it’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Perhaps heavy diners want to sit in darker areas and maybe hostesses take them there out of habit, he writes.
But in the battle of the bulge, dieters want any and all easy tips. Other tips in the book are more commonsensical.
Skinny people face away from the buffet tables when they eat. Thinner people also choose smaller plates, tricking the eye into ordering smaller portions.
At home, Wansink suggests reducing the size of plates from 12 inches to 10 inches and buying taller wine glasses. Another of his studies showed that drinkers pour 12 percent less wine in taller white wine glasses than in stouter red wine glasses that hold the same amount.
Whether these changes led to lower numbers on the scale remains unknown. Still, Wansink urges readers to follow his lab’s motto: “If you want to be skinny, do what skinny people do.”