NEW YORK - Clearing the table as you eat can be bad news for people watching their weight, according to a US study.
Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, found that people watching the Super Bowl, the American football championship game, ate 27 per cent lessif they were faced with the evidence of what they had already eaten.
The study was based on 50 graduate students at a sports bar where an open buffet featured chicken wings during the Super Bowl. Some tables were cleared of left-over bones during the game but others were left untouched.
"The results suggest that people restrict their consumption when evidence of food consumed is available to signal how much food they have eaten," Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, said in a statement.
The study, conducted with Cornell postdoctoral researcher Collin Payne, is published in the April issue of Perceptual and Motor Skills.
Wansink suggested using this study's findings to discourage overdrinking at college parties. He suggesting using a fresh plastic glass for each drink and stacking the glasses in front of people as they accumulate or leave empty bottles on the table.
