Does your mood affect how much you eat? While serious depression or anxiety are known to change appetite, even milder changes in mood can have surprising effects. You might be surprised to learn that food rituals, such as saying grace, can also alter our eating behavior. Expressing gratitude before starting a meal helps people moderate their intake and makes the dinner conversation more pleasant as well.

Studying the impact of environmental cues on how much we eat shows us how we could change some of those factors to achieve healthier eating patterns. How could choosing low-fat snacks get you into trouble? How do you know when you are done with dinner? Learn about tricks you can use to stop eating-even if the table (or your plate) still has food on it. Using this research, we could all help ourselves eat better and become slimmer and healthier.

Brian Wansink, PhD, is the John S. Dyson professor of applied economics at Cornell University and Director of the famous Cornell Food and Brand lab. He is author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. His most recent book is Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life. His websites are: http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/

 http://mindlesseating.org/

 http://smarterlunchrooms.org/

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