Got fruit on the kitchen counter? You'll weigh less
That stretch of space between the toaster and blender, fridge and stove are culprits in your battle of the bulge. So say researchers at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab who studied pictures of the counters in more than 200 American kitchens and figured out that eats on counters “could predict the weight of the woman living in each home.”
Really? Yep. And guess what?
Leave boxes of breakfast cereal sitting on the counter and you’ll weigh 20 pounds more than neighbors who don’t.
Leave bottles of soda on the counter and you’ll weigh 24-26 pounds more than neighbors who stash stuff in cabinets or refrigerators.
But wait: There’s good news. Got fruit in a bowl sitting out — you’ll weigh about 13 pounds less.
The new study, published today in Health Education & Behavior comes from Brian Wansink, (Cornell University), Drew Hanks, (Ohio State University) and Kirsikka Kaipainen (Headsted, UK), is titled “Slim by Design: Kitchen Counter Correlates of Obesity.”
“It’s your basic See-Food Diet – you eat what you see,” said lead author Wansink, in a news release. “As a cereal lover, that shocked me. Cereal has a health-halo, but if you eat a handful every time you walk by, it’s not going to make you skinny.”
While the study’s findings are correlational, Wansink, who is also author the book “Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life” (William Morrow), added: “We’ve got a saying in our lab, ‘If you want to be skinny, do what skinny people do.’ If skinny people make their homes ‘Slim by Design’ by clearing the counters of everything but the fruit bowl, it won’t hurt us to do the same.”
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