The pink box shows up when you least expect it.
The original gift of good tidings, of conflict resolution, and congratulations, the box of
donuts on your break room table constantly calls for your attention.
And with each trip to the bathroom, you walk past them, consider it, and say “No.
Not today Satan”
But then, on the 4th well intentioned potty break of the day, you see it.
A half donut.
Just half a donut.
“Surely, half of a donut won’t derail my fitness goals” you say as you reach for
that glorious hemisphere of deliciousness.
Now, some people will stop there.
They’re perfectly content having half a donut and moving on with their day.
But not me — and likely, not you either
As soon as I finish the half donut, I don’t feel satisfied.
The gates have been opened.
My brain becomes my frenemy, convincing me that there’s really no difference in 5 bites
in half a donut, and 10 bites in a full one.
Turns out it’s not just me and it's really not as simple as just "donuts taste good" — this is something called the segmentation effect.
Basically, it comes down to thinking that you’re eating less even though you might
end up eating more.
Now, a lot of factors go into what and how much we choose to eat, if you’ve ever seen
me in a taqueria you will see me eat way more tacos than what's considered "rEaS0naBle bY HeALthy sTAndArds"
One of those factors is what’s called the unit bias or the portion size effect, people
think that one “unit” of food is the /right/ amount of food, which depends
on how it’s presented.
If your bowl of popcorn is 2 liters instead of 1, you’re still probably going to eat
the whole thing because that’s one unit.
This is where a lot of college kids run into trouble with alcohol.
Yeah, you only had 3 cups, but each cup had the same amount of alcohol as 3 beers each.
The same thing applies to the donuts in the break room.
A maple bar usually has more calories than a cake donut, but that only lightly affects
your decision.
Again, each are one unit of donut.
But what about donut holes, the smallest unit of donut?
Do 3 donut holes compare to one whole donut?
That’s the phenomenon that an article in Health Psychology in 2015 tried to look in
to.
They did two studies.
In study 1, they served participants either a small portion or a large portion of food
that was presented either as a single unit or a bunch of smaller, wrapped units.
They didn’t use donuts, but the visual example helps.
In study 2, participants got the same portion of food, but presented as either a single
unit or multiple units served on separate plates.
And the results were pretty clear.
When people were served smaller units, they ate /multiple/ units.
And they actually ate less overall than when served the larger, single unit.
This is like saying people will always eat multiple donut holes but they’re still going
to eat less than a full donut’s worth of donut holes.
But here’s the thing — your brain decided it was going to be full before you even started digesting food.
And that might be because those multiple smaller units of food trick your brain into thinking
it’s more full.
A 2017 article in the journal Appetite noticed that the segmentation effect had only been
tested when participants were served ad libitum, which just means they got to eat as much as
they wanted.
But people don’t really eat like that in real life.
They usually put some food on their plate and finish the whole thing.
So the researchers wanted to know if the segmentation effect would still show up even before people
started eating.
They already knew that people tend to portion out food based on how full they think it’ll
make them.
In food studies, we call that feeling of being full satiety.
There is after all a big difference between feeling full and feeling not hungry.
The researchers had people look at pictures of different food on a computer that were
broken into one, three, or 6 smaller units.
For example, I’ve got the segmented portion on the right, single unit on the left.
Which side do you think has more food?
Which one do you think will fill you up more?
In the end, people estimated a 28% increase in satiety for the six smaller portions compared
to the larger single serving.
They also thought they were getting a greater volume of food.
Even though the pictures showed them the same volume, just divided, the multiple smaller
units seemed like more food.
And that’s where my brain gets me into trouble with half donuts.
I always go for the second half.
Had I gone into the donut box just committing to a full donut, I’d be fine — unit bias
told me I’m finished eating and any food related guilt I have is done with there.
So why do I always go for another half?
That part is an easier explanation.
Higher calorie foods, regardless of how tasty they are, are more tempting and harder to
resist than lower calorie foods.
fMRI scans actually show that our reward centers are more activated when we look at pictures
of high calorie foods compared to other foods.
So it comes as no surprise that when we see the other half of the donut, the one our brain
is now excited to see, the one that, according to the segmentation effect will make us feel
more full, we go for it…. sometimes a few times.
So when you do go for the full donut, which according to this poll over on our community
tab, you all tend to do, you may actually be making a better decision.
You told your brain that after one whole unit, you’re done, and your snacking stops there.
Now I want to hear from you all.
What does your workplace or school do for treats?
And do you have some half donut enabling monster that leaves behind my worst nightmare?
Let me know in the comments below.
Otherwise like the video, have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next time.