Snack-sized treats might be designed to help you eat less but a new study suggests these mini packs actually have the opposite effect on the hips. Research from the Netherlands has found that small "diet packs" of lollies, biscuits or chips could be encouraging people to drop their guard and eat more than they usually would. Those who eat them feel they don't need to exercise self-control because it is a pre-portioned pack, and they end up eating several of them, according to research in New Scientist magazine. But Australian nutrition experts argue that the findings go against a major body of evidence showing mini packs do their job in helping people eat less.
The European researchers studied the snacking habits of 140 students who were given either two large 200g bags of potato chips or nine 45g packs of chips while watching television.
The volunteers had been weighed beforehand to put them in a diet mindset. Just a quarter of those with the large packs cracked them open, compared with 59 per cent of those with the small packs, say Rik Pieters and colleagues at Tilburg University. The small pack consumers ended up eating twice as much.
Professor Pieters, a marketing specialist, said the small bags seemed to make diet conscious people lose their self-control. He said while companies making smaller products might actually want to help consumers eat less "our results suggest they won't". "Some may want to prevent lawsuits by showing it's not their fault consumers are overweight," he said. "Or they may know this happens, and want to look good while selling more of their products at a higher profit."
But Dr Tim Crowe, a nutrition specialist at Deakin University in Melbourne, said smaller serving sizes had been seen in other research to encourage people to eat less. "This research goes against almost all other studies that show that when people have large serving sizes they eat more," Dr Crowe said. "So giving smaller portion sizes to consumers is a viable way to stop people over-eating and putting on weight." "It's as simple as that." Reported by: By Tamara McLean
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