Is Your Kitchen Making You Fat?

Consider Your Home Design

Open kitchen and dining area floor plans remove visual and physical barriers between diners and food. In other words, when you can see the fridge from the couch, you’re more likely to grab some food. Try to arrange furniture in your living space so that you face away from where you store, prepare or serve food. Plus, avoid transparent doors that allow you to see into shelves and cupboards. 

Avoid Seeing Red

The colour red is known to stimulate your appetite and grab your attention—which is why you see it in every fast-food restaurant on the planet—and exactly why you don't want it where you eat. So, when considering your kitchen design, steer clear of red shades and instead, choose blue tones which are said to have a calming effect on our minds which in turn might curb the urge to overindulge.

Increase Your Cupboard Space  

Consider your cupboard space for food storage as well as for your kitchen utensils. The more foods that are out of view, the less likely for temptation. If you have little cupboard space, your food will most likely end up on your kitchen worktops or in fancy jars or decanters. No matter how stylish they may look in your kitchen, you’re doing yourself a big disservice. Professor Wansink points out that when cereal is left out in a kitchen, statistically you will weigh 2st – nearly 13kg – more than someone who is not exposed to such temptation. “In sight, in stomach,” is a catchphrase often used by Wansink.

Clear Kitchen Clutter

A messy kitchen is not just an eyesore, it could also trigger the munchies, according to a 2016 study titled "Clutter, Chaos and Overconsumption," which examined how the organization level of kitchens affected their inhabitants' food intake. The findings indicate that people in cluttered kitchens consumed twice as many calories from empty-calorie foods than those in tidy kitchens.

Create A Working Space Away From The Kitchen 

When you get up to stretch your legs and clear your head it can all too easily turn into a stroll to the biscuit tin. Familiar? Invest in Alessi’s biscuit jar with a bell in the lid that rings when you open it. That will quickly stop you from reaching in the tin unnoticed. 

Don’t Eat And Watch At the Same Time

Create a dining area that is situated away from a screen. Several studies show that people who eat in front of the TV eat 30 per cent more. This unhealthy eating habit is now so popular it’s been coined as ‘distracted eating’. 

Serve Your Food Away From The Table 

Apparently, we eat 20 per cent less if meals are served up from the worktop rather than the table. If you enjoy serving large sharing platters, still do so, but once served, move it off the table to avoid easy second helpings.