Portion and Wrap To Consume Less

April 22, 2008

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Are there things that you wish to decrease your consumption of? Food and money spring to mind? An interesting way to do this may be to divide and wrap things.

A new study suggests that you will consume less, if something is split up into portions rather than presented as one.

In the first of two sets of experiments, participants were given 24 cookies and asked to report how long it took to consume them. Half the participants got all the cookies in one box, the other half received a box with every cookie individually wrapped. The average time of consumption for those who got the cookies together in one box was 6 days. For those who got the individually wrapped cookies it took an average of 24 days (!). I am sure being in a study slowed the consumption of both groups. However, it is quite striking that those having individually wrapped cookies took so much longer to consume them all.

It makes sense that if they are individually wrapped it is much harder to graze. Additionally, to eat a cookie you have to make the decision to unwrap it; there is more time to consider your action.

In another set of experiments, participants were given $100 of fake money in a gambling study. Half got all the money in one envelope, the other half got 10 sealed envelopes with $10 in each. Those with the money divided between 10 envelopes tended to spend less. Again presumably giving the participants more time to consider their action and having to commit to opening an envelope.

So perhaps the thing to do is when you get food that you don’t want to consume immediately is to split it up and wrap it some way in individual packets. I am going to give it a try with chocolate. Money will be trickier to control this way, since we are a credit card society and most of us don’t use that much cash.

The study is described in Science News.

photo credit: stu_spivack