Eat Slow, Lose Weight? An interview with Dr. Kathleen Melanson
Kathleen Melanson, Director of the University of Rhode Island's Energy Metabolism Laboratory, is conducting a series of brilliant and simple experiments about the connection between how fast we eat and how many calories we consume.
One experiment even got press in USA Today: 30 college-age women were asked to eat a meal of pasta and sauce with grated cheese, and a glass of water on two different occasions. One time they were asked to eat quickly, and were given a large spoon and bowl, and the other time they were asked to eat as slowly as possible, with a small spoon and bowl, and instructed to place their spoon down between bites.
The results: fast eaters consumed 646 calories in 9 minutes (4307 calories per hour), while slow eaters took in 579 calories in 27 minutes (1287 calories per hour, or about 30% as much as the fast eaters).
Peter Bregman and I recently got Dr. Melanson on the phone to talk about the study design, the results, upcoming experiments, and the whole process of scientific research. Join us for this freewheeling and funny interview and discover
- how this study was started by accident
- how to do hard science on the cheap
- how researchers develop and test hypotheses
- how to take advantage of the research to eat healthier and weigh less
Listen online (25 minutes) or download the mp3 file (6 MB) to your computer or iPod:
2 Comments »
January 9, 2007
Amanda :
What is the deal with the different sized bowl and spoon? They would need to stick to one variable at a time to get any kind of meaningful result…
January 13, 2007
Howie :
Sometimes purity in research leads to rock-solid conclusions that don't really matter. Especially when you're beginning to look at a topic, it probably makes more sense to answer the big, general question – does eating slowly reduce caloric intake – than to focus on the specific tools and mechanisms by which it happens.
There's a bias in the scientific community for very granularly controlled experiments, which works well in pharmaceutical and surgical interventions, but not so well for behavioral studies. The more you control for in the lab, the less you can apply the results to real situations.