In a recently published article, a team of researchers showed that a simple graphical cue, showing people which foods are healthy and unhealthy, significantly improve their eating behaviors. Here is a nice summary of the study results, as summarized on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website:
With a problem as large as America’s obesity epidemic, it might come down to changing behavior one stoplight at a time.
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If you use a smaller plate when you eat, you’ll eat less food. Here’s a rather wonky summary of research on plate size, a “meta-analysis” showing that smaller plates mean you put less food on the plate and, thus, eat less food. Less pie on your plate; less pie in your pie hole!
People often show an amazing ability to emotionally recover from difficult circumstances. I devoted my second book, You’re Stronger Than You Think, to this topic. Now comes some really cool research, showing that people’s ability to bounce back from adversity depends, not all that surprisingly, on their underlying personality traits. Although this result is not…
Put our brains into the modern food environment, and you have a recipe for disaster. Our brains are hardwired to crave calorie-dense foods, this craving no doubt arising from our evolutionary time spent on the Tundra where calories were often scarce. But our modern food environment surrounds us with calorie-dense foods, forcing us to deplete…
Whatever you think about the proper role of the government in nudging adult Americans into healthier habits, you ought to be open to the idea that we, as a society, should be doing something to reduce obesity among children. As I wrote about in Free Market Madness, once people become obese, biology conspires against them…
Recently, my 15-year-old son and a group of his friends went out together for dinner and a movie. The movie they chose to see was an R-rated comedy, a fact that only struck them when they approached the ticket office and realized they would not be allowed to see the movie. Not to be deterred,…
NPR recently covered my research with David Comerford on effort aversion. Our research gives some insight into how people wind up in boring jobs. You can listen to the NPR Morning Edition segment here.