Health /

Copied

Looking to eat less? Try bigger utensils. A study compared how much restaurant-goers ate using different forks, one 20% larger than a standard restaurant fork, and the other 20% smaller. Researchers discovered that those who employed the big fork left more food uneaten—7.91 ounces of food compared to 4.43 ounces for the small-forkers, the New York Times reports. The phenomenon may be tied to our eating goals, the researchers say.

“When people have a well-defined hunger goal to satisfy and put forth effort to reach the goal, they consume more from a small fork rather than from a large fork,” they note. “The small fork gives a feeling that they are not making much progress in satiating their hunger, which results in more consumption compared to when they have a large fork.” (Read more food stories.)