Peter Principle

Back in college, the head of the Lab for Computer Science had a reputation for agressively pursuing grants and equipment. One of my professors used to joke: “If you offer Prof. Brown five pounds of bat guano, he’ll immediately ask for ten”.
Turns out, most people behave the same way. According to Cornell Prof. Brian Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating”, you can get people to eat really old, stale popcorn, as long as you give them a big enough tub of the stuff. And people will always eat more if you serve food on bigger plates.

His overarching conclusion is that our decisions about eating often have little to do with how hungry we are. Instead, we rely on cues like the size of a popcorn bucket — or the way we organize our refrigerator — to tell us how much to eat.
The scariest part is that most of us think we are immune to these hidden persuaders.

Mr. Wansink and his team were so taken aback by the results of their experiments on the shape of glasses that some of them went home and replaced the squat glasses they owned with tall, skinny ones. Mr. Wansink also uses dinner plates from the 1940s, which have the double advantage of being smaller and being more interesting than your typical Crate and Barrel fare.

Eating disorders are a big problem in our society, especially among young women. Recorded cases have doubled in the U.S. since the 1960s. A recent article in Scientific American, “Through a Glass, Darkly“, discusses some of the causes.

It’s hard to know exactly how many people suffer from eating disorders. The article claims about 4% of women will suffer from clinical anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa in their lifetime. Another 2 to 5% of Americans will have a binge-eating disorder in any 6 month period.

And what causes these problems? A lot of people rightly blame media for promoting malnourished waifs as the ideal body image. This sets impossible goals, for women to look like the thinnest 5% of society. Yet while many women are influenced by those external images, recent studies say that those who suffer from eating disorders are more affected by their own faulty self-image.

A faulty body image–rather than an exaggerated ideal–is crucial to the development of eating disorders.

What lies behind a distorted body image? To answer this question, Vocks’s team took photographs of 56 people suffering from eating disorders and 209 healthy subjects used as controls. The scientists then asked the test subjects to adjust their images on a computer screen until they “recognized” themselves. Additionally, they asked both groups to give their virtual “me” the figure that they wished they had.
Whereas all the respondents had similar notions of an “ideal” figure, the bulimics and anorexics all significantly overestimated their real body mass. In contrast, the subjects who were not suffering from eating disorders believed that they were slimmer than they actually were.

Another trigger for eating disorders is “frequent and extreme dieting”. This confuses the body’s “hunger-satiety system”, leading to faulty perceptions and behavior. Ironically, dieting is also the best predictor of future weight gain. Dieting is worse than useless.

A child’s upbringing can also increase risk. Eating disorders often occur in well-off, well educated families. Yet when parents set high standards, the children feel pressure to excel, to be “model students” and lead perfect lives as adults. That’s always an unattainable goal. Conversely, a good relationship between parents and children balances security and independence. This promotes a healthy self-image. Without that positive influence, children are at greater risk of eating disorders and drug addiction.

What’s the prognosis? Not so good. About 5% of anorexic women die from the disease. Fully one quarter remain chronic anorexics for the rest of their life. A third regain some weight, but continue to have badly distorted body self-images. Only about 30% of anorexic women recover fully.

The situation is a bit better for bulimics. Half of those who get treatment recover from the disease. The other half continue to binge and purge for the rest of their life, which often causes chemical imbalances, digestive tract damage, and increased risk of heart attacks.