Healthy Eating – Aided by Design!

The weather finally turning warm each year is a wonderful moment.  It’s that time when we can leave our homes without the coats and sweaters that have encased us for months.  Our moods near euphoria as we nearly dance towards our closets to put on our warm weather clothes.  Excitement builds as we open our closet doors, and then we don something we found oh so desirable to slip into last year.

And it doesn’t fit right anymore.  It’s tight where it used to be flowing.  Ripples of, dare we admit it – fat—are visible through sheerer panels.  Waist bands can be cinched, but just barely.

Dieting begins immediately.

Space Design for Eating!

Space design can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to resist the luscious brownies that your neighbour brings by, but the environment inside your home can help you resist the call of extra calories.  If your issue is not situations where people eat too much but when they consume too little, design can help you encourage eating also.

Creating a space for comfortable eating in your home is important to your wellbeing and that of all of the social groups that will spend time at your house – your immediate family, your extended family, your friends, the work colleagues who gather at the end-of-year holiday parties at your place . . . . . We bond in a powerful way with others when we eat with them, there is probably some important reason for this buried in our prehistory related to ritual eating and celebratory feasting, but why eating together originally mattered to us isn’t nearly as important to you as making sure the people in your life can gather and have lovely times eating at your house.

What colours surround you when you eat?

One of the first questions that generally gets asked about design and eating is if colours on walls, plates, etc., can influence how much we eat. The answer:  surface colours do indeed influence our appetite.

Looking at warm colours boosts our appetite, while seeing cooler ones has the opposite effect.  Looking at warm colours has positive social repercussions—doing so encourages us to behave in more social ways.  You may need to weigh appetite and social effects against each other to make a colour decision that serves your at-home needs most comprehensively.

How can you use this information?

By colouring the eating spaces in your world with relatively more cool or warm colours.

 

If people who will be eating in a space you’re working on are likely to be trying to eat a little less, put cool colours on the walls, in any upholstery or wall coverings, or other surfaces like this:

At your local paint store, pick blues and greens, or cool beiges, for example. An advantage of using greens:  seeing shades of green supports creative performance, so if you work in your dining area while you’re not dining there, green can be a good option.  Another green benefit, in a green space, with a creative boost, you may be able to come up with clever ways to cut more calories from your world as well as how to diffuse a family celebration morphing into a family battle, around a tasty but ignored roast.

If you or someone who’ll be eating in your home often seem to lack an appetite – and to all the doubters out there, these people do, in fact, exist – paint the breakfast nook in your kitchen a warm colour, go crazy with the warm shades in other spaces where people will eat.  This means you’ll be selecting colours such as oranges, peaches, and warm beiges for places people will be eating.  We’re also likely feel a little warmer while we’re in areas with warmer colours predominating; that temperature effect can be particularly significant for people dining alone who are apt to feel colder (literally) than those eating with others. Like this:

If you’re not really interested in influencing appetite via colour, make sure that the relative surface areas covered by warmer and cooler colours is relatively equal.

Lighting

The second most frequently asked question that gets asked about dining and designing probes using light to influence how much is consumed.

When light is warmer, we’re apt to linger, particularly if other people are present and that can lead to eating more—lingering can, insidiously, lead to “calorie intake creep;” warm light boosts our appetite.  Warmer light creates an atmosphere that’s great for relaxing and mingling, and as a species one of the things that we really enjoy doing together is eating, so it’s no surprise that warmer light, the sort produced by candles or light bulbs labelled “warm” can be paired with eating a little more than planned or intended.

Cooler lights, from light bulbs in packages labelled “cool,” for example, help us concentrate when we’re working and to eat a little less when foods nearby. Lights effects on work can be particularly useful if when you’re not eating in your dining area, you’re doing your job there.

It’s likely that in any room you’ll find that a mix of warm and cool lights work best.  We respond more strongly to warmer lights when they’re in table top or floor lamps or mounted relatively low on walls and to cooler lights when they’re overhead, and positioning your warm and cool light bulbs accordingly is likely to work best for you.

We eat a little more when the light in the space we’re in is a little dimmer, and less and more healthfully when it’s brighter—which makes those candlelight dinners, unfortunately, bad for your waist line.

Visual Clues…

It is true, fortunately or unfortunately, that we feel motivated to eat what we see.  This works out better for people who like to “decorate” with fruits and vegetables fresh from the farmer’s market, than those who frequent bakeries, at least in regards to healthy eating and cutting calories.

If possible, enter your home in a way that doesn’t lead you through the kitchen and any food that might be visible there, on counters, in glass fronted cabinets, etc.  Similarly, you may want to spend less time in your kitchen just “hanging out” at non-meal times or, at a basic level, avoid buying an open plan home if you’re house shopping if you or someone you live with has significant eating related issues.

Tuck food you don’t want to be tempted to eat out of sight, in a cupboard with a solid door you can’t see through, for example.  If you have clear drawers in your refrigerator, you may want to line one or more of those drawers with paper to prevent goodies from being visible when you open the door to the refrigerator.

Putting tempting but unhealthy foods into cupboards where you can’t see them is a pretty obvious way to manage views of food.  You may not think as much about views from one part of your home to another as you eat, but they can have a powerful effect on what’s consumed.

As you eat, if you can see food in the kitchen/cooking area, you’re more likely to go back into the kitchen or cooking area and eat some more of it.  An example, if you make a roast for dinner and put some on diners’ plates, but the rest of that roast, the remaining meat, is visible on a countertop as you dine, you’ll be more apt to return to the kitchen and get “seconds” of that meat.  Seconds of meat are unlikely to have as serious consequences as seconds (and thirds) of mashed potatoes or glazed carrots, but may not be desirable, none-the-less—and the same principles apply here whether you’re eating broccoli or exquisite pastries.

Standing height, free-standing screens can help resolve this food issue if architectural changes aren’t reasonable options.  Also, screens can be move out of the way when you aren’t concerned about views from one space to another and are more focused on efficient movement.  While you’re adding screens, you may want to look for some with curving forms and patterns in the materials that cover their surfaces, those are the options that will be most comfortable and relaxing to look at.

Also, remember, the most serious issue here is food views.  It’s possible that simply re-arranging furniture can keep food vistas in check.

There’s more!

There’s more to how what you’re seeing as you’re eating influences what you consume.

If you’re worried about eating too much of foods that aren’t good for you, position a mirror or something with a very shiny surface, so that you can see yourself in it while you’re eating.  Research shows that if you’ve placed food that isn’t too healthy on your own plate and can see yourself while you’re eating it, those naughty foods won’t taste as good as usual and you’ll eat a little less of them.  Someone who is eating alone may, in a different way, benefit from seeing themselves in a mirror while they eat.  Eating is a social activity for humans, we tend to do it with others.  Research has shown that people at risk of not eating enough, particularly since they’re dining alone, such as older individuals living by themselves, are apt to eat more when they can see themselves in a mirror.

 

Even the art that we look at as we eat influences how much we consume.  If you’re looking at a sculpture of a very thin person, the researchers used works by Giacometti while collecting information, you’re likely to eat less than if you’re looking at something else.

Images of Nature

We’re more apt to make healthy eating choices when looking at images of nature than when we’re not, so decorate your dining space with photos from vacations in the country, natural environments you aspire to visit, or that oversized painting that your great aunt did of the meadow outside her home years ago and then sent you as a gift.

Socialising

The fact that humans are a social species, and social eaters, has all sorts of ramifications.  First, it means whenever we can eat with others, we take pleasure in doing so and generally with while-eating conversations—any place in your home that you’ll be eating while mingling should be equipped with enough seats of the same type so that the heads of everyone eating will be at about the same height above the floor.  This objective is achieved if everyone sits on the model chair, or chairs whose legs are all about the same length, even if the people talking are actually different heights when they stand up.  What needs to be avoided is some people sitting in seats where the seat itself, known at the seat pan, is much closer to the floor than others.  Research consistently shows that when we look up at people, we think of them as more “adult-like”, for instance, as being experienced and competent, while people who get looked down onto are seen as childlike, less experienced, and less competent.  These adult-child categorizations harm communication among people who are actually peers.

Dining tables where everyone can see everyone else’s eyes will encourage a free flow of communication among equal-status diners, but many dining areas are the wrong size or shape of accommodate a round table that seats more than just a couple of people.  Square tables, like round tables, allow for good eye contact without anyone sitting at the head or the foot of a table, with the corresponding status-related designation as the “head-of-the-table.”  Square tables are often no easier to place in a dining area than round ones.

The solution?

Either a bigger dining area, which generally isn’t an option (and round tables that are more than about five or six feet across can impede conversation anyway, because people across the table from each other are just too far away for casual feeling chats) or a rectangular table.  A rectangular table doesn’t have to have people seated on all four sides.  When the short ends are seat free the conversation can be as egalitarian and free flowing as at round or square ones—and because of the way many eating areas are designed, a rectangular table with “open” seats on its shortest sides may be the most viable way for you to dine.

Make sure that all dining chairs have cushions, even the removable tie on types.  We get along much better with other people when we’re sitting on even slightly cushioned seats than when we’re on hard surfaces—and that can be particularly handy during family political debates over holiday meals.

Clear that clutter (I know we keep saying it, but have you cleared it all up yet? It often turns up again! Keep it in check!)

Clutter ups stress, so managing visual clutter levels, as discussed in this article, can be an important way to cut tension-related eating.  How many baskets do you really need on your kitchen countertops?  Visible pans (even if they’re copper)?  Do you ever use that bread maker?  Mixer?  Tuck what you don’t use or need out of view and cut clutter where you cook as well as where you eat.

Designing where you put your dining area

When you’re considering building that dining booth into your kitchen, keep in mind that we seem to eat more healthy foods when more people can see us than we do when tucked away in a booth, at least in restaurants; more secluded dining options may not be as good for the people in your home as more visible ones.  We are, however, apt to have a more pleasant eating experience when people aren’t walking directly behind us as we eat, for example, there may be a short wall or some plants between us and them—we still have a primordial fear of being attached from behind while we’re doing something such as eating that diverts some of our energy from looking for developing dangerous situations in the world around us.  We especially enjoy having a view around us, of a natural landscape, for example, as we eat.  This prospect (or view) combined with the feeling of security leads to the profoundly comforting condition of prospect and refuge, also discussed here.

Our Senses

Delicious cooking smells….

You’ll want to consider how your heating and air conditioning system is likely to move smells through your home as you design for dining.  If it consistently distributes the delicious scents of dinner cooking through your home, creating opportunities for them to linger and encourage future snacking, a re-do may be in order.  Research has shown that the smell of coffee is energizing, it even energizes rats who have never had coffee and would have no way of knowing about how our society generally uses coffee to perk itself up.  Maybe you should brew your morning coffee bedside.

Adding warm scents to an environment (for example cedarwood) has been linked to consuming fewer calories than smelling cooler smells, such as eucalyptus are present.

Choose the music that you play at dinner parties, or during meals everyday, carefully.  The more we like the soundscape as we eat, the more positive our opinions are of whatever we’re consuming.

Researchers have found that when we’re calmer, because we’re listening to quieter, relaxing music, for example, or in an area that has plants, for instance we have more “mental bandwidth” available to consider our food options and make healthier selections, consume fewer calories, and have a better time as we eat.  Also, we rate eating spaces with plants in them more positively than similar areas without plants.

Shapes can influence the taste of the food too!

Interestingly, we also link particular shapes and tastes and the forms of dishes that you serve food from or eat from can influence your perceptions of what you are tasting, according to the research evidence.  We link more angular shapes with bitter and sour tastes as well as sharp tastes (an example: cheddar cheese).  Similarly, curving shapes are associated with sweeter tastes and smooth, creamy textures. Angular shapes/forms are also linked to spiciness.  Want people to think your chili is mind blowingly spicy?  Serve it from a dish with a spiky, star burst rim.

Design can make it more likely that we eat well—more healthfully, while enjoying the time we spend eating more—another way it can powerfully and positively improve our lives.

 

Additional Resources

Charles Spence.  2017.  Gastrophysics:  The New Science of Eating.  Viking; New York.

Brian Wansink.  2014.  Slim By Design.  William Morrow:  New York.