How Easily Your Mind Is Fooled Into a Restaurant

The dishes are spectacularly presented, the food looks impeccable, the wine is chilled, and the ambiance is extraordinary. This is the perfect image for a romantic restaurant dinner.

What you don't know is that the way everything is presented to you is built in such a way that you spend more time and consume more than you normally would like. A 1998 study by the University of Pennsylvania showed that cravings do not necessarily come from the stomach, but rather from a mental state.

The researchers took two people suffering from a severe form of amnesia, who were repeatedly served lunch, forgetting that, due to their medical condition, they had just finished a meal. The bottom line is that although the stomach knows very well what to eat, the mind is easy to fool.

How easily your mind is fooled into a restaurant. 5 ways you are misled

Let's start with something easy

Before you have dinner at the restaurant and until you decide what you are going to eat, you will likely order a bottle of wine. The way you choose your wine can be according to the recommendations of your friends, from your own experience, or even according to the price, considering that a more expensive bottle automatically means a higher quality wine.

A study conducted by Liane Schmidt of the Sorbonne University and taken over by Forbes tested several subjects, putting them in the ascending order of quality of several unknown varieties of wine, the only information available being only the price. What the subjects did not know was that all the glasses contained the same type of wine, but the indicated price also dictated the order of quality.

If you are in a restaurant, first ask to taste the wine before ordering it, using these tasting tricks that will help you distinguish a good wine from a weaker one, coming out of the trap of displayed prices.

Menu arrangement tricks

A JCR study by Americans from The Atlantic found that placing the total number of calories for each serving in the menus had an unexpected effect on consumers.

Usually, the organization of all the low-calorie products in a single page pushes consumers to look for high-fat and high-calorie foods, considering that they will be more satisfying choices.

How the food fools you

If a product is labeled as healthy, then most consumers will automatically think that it also has a weaker taste, and JCR tests show just that.

For the mind, a healthier product means harder to eat, which is why strong food textures are always associated with better food for the body, despite the fact that the number of calories and nutritional value is not changed in any way.

Ambiance and appetite

Temperature, smell, noise, and light influence what and how much you eat, according to an Instead report. According to this study, you will eat more in a restaurant when the temperature is lower due to the need for energy.

The dim light will make you eat slower, and the pleasant smells will make you drink more carbonated drinks.

Salad traps

In 2013, CUNY specialists discovered that placing salads alongside menus high in fat and calories has the effect of convincing you that the choice you make will be perfectly healthy.

More and more studies show that the mind can be easily misled by small details that make you eat more or you can't tell the difference between a quality product and a more modest one from this point of view, precious details when you try to take better care of your diet and health.

The location

If you are abroad, remember one simple thing: If the restaurant is placed in a location full of tourists, most likely the restaurant is pricy and the food is mediocre.

Try to find a restaurant where the locals are eating.