Article date: April 1, 2008 Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad
for You Americans are living large these days. And eating large.
And drinking large. And, as a consequence, shopping for extra-
large. In many ways, a high-consumption lifestyle takes more
effort to avoid in the US than to embrace. We are surrounded
with opportunities to overeat -- the typical movie theater snack
bar, for example, where tub-sized soft drinks and popcorn often
come with free refills. And as studies have shown time and
again, when served bigger portions, people will simply eat more
food. The instinct to eat whatever food is at hand is so strong
that humans eat more even if the food tastes bad. In one study,
while people at a movie theater given 14-day-old popcorn in
boxes twice the normal size did complain about the taste, they
still ended up eating 34% more popcorn than the people who got
their stale snack in normal-sized boxes. So if it sometimes
seems the entire country has been "super-sized," that may not be
too far off. Recent