Hungry for a Super Bowl victory? The Super Buffet table may end up making the final score.
The Super Bowl ranks #1 in terms of home parties (it even beats New Year's Eve), and it ranks #2 in food consumption, according to the book, Mindless Eating (Bantam 2006). In 2004, Super Bowl partiers ate 4,000 tons of popcorn, 14,000 tons of chips and an estimated 3,200,000 pizzas.
And according to a new study, "Even the food you see when you watch the Super Bowl can lead you to ‘Blimp' out," says researcher Collin Payne, Ph.D., of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
In a Champaign, IL sports bar, 53 Super Bowl partiers were treated to all-you-can-eat chicken wings buffet. The party was actually a study, and during the game waitresses bussed the chicken bones from half of the tables, or they let them pile up on people's plates.
Sports fans eating off of clean plates ate 43% more chicken wings than those whose bones stayed on their plates. "These left-overs served as boney reminders of how much they had eaten. This kept them from mindlessly eating more," said Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Cornell University professor, and lead author of the study.
In general, it is important to have some idea of how much you have eaten. Serve yourself onto a plate, and then stop when the plate is empty. This is the best strategy for unintended overeating at your Super Bowl party," says Wansink. "Dish it out, eat it slowly, and stop."
The study is forthcoming in the journal, Perceptual and Motor Skills.
Perceptual and Motor Skills