Need to make your moderate alcohol consumption a little more, well, moderate? Then maybe you should take into account the shape or color of your wine glass.


In a small new study, researchers from Iowa State and Cornell universities found that people tend to unintentionally pour more wine into their glasses[1] if the glasses are wider. They also tend to over-pour when they're holding the glasses in their hands, and when the glassware doesn't match the color of the wine.


"People have trouble assessing volumes," study researcher Laura Smarandescu, an assistant professor of marketing at Iowa State, explained in a statement. "They tend to focus more on the vertical than the horizontal measures. That's why people tend to drink less when they drink from a narrow glass, because they think they’re drinking more."


The study, published in the journal Substance Use and Misuse, included 73 study participants who drank at least a glass of wine each week. All the study participants were instructed to pour themselves a glass of wine at different stations the researchers had set up.


Researchers manipulated various environmental factors to see how they affected the amount of alcohol poured into the glasses. For instance, researchers purposely set up a station with a small place setting and a station with a large place setting, to see if anticipation of a meal affected the amount of alcohol poured into the glass. Researchers also had participants pour the wine into a glass on a table, or into a glass they were themselves holding. They also had participants pour wine into large, standard or wide glasses, as well as red whine into a clear glass or white wine into a clear glass.


Indeed, certain cues led to more wine being poured into the glasses. A wider glass was linked with 11.9 percent more wine being poured, holding the glass was linked with 12.2 percent more wine being poured, and high color contrast between wine and glass (red wine in a clear glass) was linked with 9.2 percent more wine being poured.


According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a standard drink [2] is considered 5 fluid ounces of table wine, 3 to 4 ounces of fortified wine (like port or sherry), 12 fluid ounces of regular beer or 8 to 9 fluid ounces of malt liquor.



Moderate drinking for women means having no more than one alcoholic beverage a day for women, and no more than two for men, according to government guidelines. Moderate drinking has been linked with some health benefits[3] , but keep in mind that excessive alcohol consumption[4] can lead to a number of ills, including chronic liver disease, alcohol abuse or dependence, injuries and even cancer.



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  • Use A Bigger Fork


    A study published in the <em>Journal of Consumer Research</em> shows that restaurant-goers who <a href="http://www.jcr-admin.org/files/pressPDFs/071311193612_mishra.pdf" target="_hplink">eat with really big forks</a> (20 percent bigger than a normal fork you'd find at a restaurant) eat less food and leave more on their plates than people who eat with really small forks.

    A possible explanation for this finding is that when people use small forks to eat, they feel like they are not making any big <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/15/using-a-big-fork-may-help-you-eat-less/?xid=huffpo-direct" target="_hplink">progress in eating their meal</a> and quelling their hunger pangs, <em>TIME</em> reported. In addition, the restaurant-goers who ate with the smaller forks and were given bigger portions of food at much more food than if they just had the smaller forks or if they just had the bigger portions.




  • Eat From A Smaller Bowl


    Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology shows that people eat 31 percent more ice cream when they eat out of a 34-ounce bowl, rather than 17-ounce one, ScienceDaily reported. Researchers explained that's because people eat about 92 percent of what they serve themselves -- so if you <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060803082602.htm" target="_hplink">serve yourself more, you'll eat more</a>.




  • Get Some Sleep


    Columbia University researchers found that <a href="http://www.thirdage.com/news/sleep-deprivation-may-increase-hunger_3-26-2011" target="_hplink">sleep deprivation can also lead to more calories consumed</a>. They found that women who only got 4 hours sleep the night before ate 329 more calories in a nine-hour period compared with if they weren't sleep deprived, while men ate 263 more calories when <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/sleep-more-lose-weight_b_857080.html" target="_hplink">sleep-deprived</a>.

    "It has an impact on cognitive restraint," study researcher Marie-Pierre St. Onge told ThirdAge. "High-fat food is tempting, and maybe on <a href="http://www.thirdage.com/news/sleep-deprivation-may-increase-hunger_3-26-2011" target="_hplink">short sleep you can't restrain yourself</a> as well, while on full sleep you can resist more easily."




  • Mind Your Environment


    <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/mindless-eating-environment-location_n_945712.html" target="_hplink">WHERE you eat your food</a> could also factor in to how much you eat and whether you're eating food even though you're not hungry, according to research from the University of Southern California.

    Researchers had movie-goers say whether they were regular popcorn-eaters or not, and then they had them eat either stale popcorn or freshly popped popcorn. The regular popcorn-eaters ate just as much stale popcorn as fresh popcorn, while people who didn't consider themselves regular popcorn-eaters ate significantly less stale popcorn than fresh since it didn't taste as good.

    "The results show just how <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/mindless-eating-environment-location_n_945712.html" target="_hplink">powerful our environment can be</a> in triggering unhealthy behavior," study researcher David Neal said in a statement. "Sometimes willpower and good intentions are not enough, and we need to trick our brains by controlling the environment instead."




  • Hide The Junk Food


    Research from Cornell University shows that we are three times more likely to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/see-first-eat-visible-food_n_984004.html" target="_hplink">eat the first thing that we see</a>, compared with the fifth thing we see.

    In that study, researchers took photographs of 100 kitchen cupboards and asked the owners to keep records of what they ate. Researchers also tried moving the food around in the cupboards to see if that impacted their food choices -- and found that it did.

    The research shows that "we end up being masters of our own demise, to some extent," study researcher Professor Brian Wansink, Ph.D., author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," told HuffPost.




  • Eat Using Your Non-Dominant Hand


    Research published in the <em>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</em> shows that <a href="http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/overeating-which-hand-are-you-using/" target="_hplink">eating with your non-dominant hand</a> can help you to decrease the amount of food you consume, CNN reported.

    The finding was part of the same movie-theater/popcorn study, where it was discovered that environment plays a part in mindless eating. Like in that experiment, researchers gave study participants either fresh or stale popcorn. They found that people who used their non-dominant hands and ate the stale popcorn ate 30 percent less than if they used their dominant hands, CNN reported.




  • How to Avoid Mindless Eating


    Food Think with Wansink: Economy-size snacks can cause you to eat more