How Big Is Your Kitchen?
An analysis of the evolution of the kitchen, and how that might contribute to the greater incidence of overweight among Americans. The headline of the article ("Do bigger kitchens equal bigger people?") may seem pretty ridiculous, but there are one or two interesting points in the article that I think make it worth checking out.
Blatner generally admires the trend toward big, open kitchens, which she says foster positive feelings about cooking and discourage people from eating high-calorie takeout or going to restaurants, where portions are almost always too large. But she's not crazy about using the kitchen as an ersatz media center or office space. 'Americans become very mindless when they eat while watching TV, paying the bills, answering the phone, doing e-mails,' she says. 'When we put all those tasks in the middle of the kitchen, with all that food around, we're creating a recipe for a lot of mindless munching.'
My kitchen and my living room are one and the same, but that's because I live in a miniature apartment. I don't have any food though, so that's probably meaningless.
Blatner generally admires the trend toward big, open kitchens, which she says foster positive feelings about cooking and discourage people from eating high-calorie takeout or going to restaurants, where portions are almost always too large. But she's not crazy about using the kitchen as an ersatz media center or office space. 'Americans become very mindless when they eat while watching TV, paying the bills, answering the phone, doing e-mails,' she says. 'When we put all those tasks in the middle of the kitchen, with all that food around, we're creating a recipe for a lot of mindless munching.'
My kitchen and my living room are one and the same, but that's because I live in a miniature apartment. I don't have any food though, so that's probably meaningless.
10 Comments:
Actually, you could posit the theory that those of us with miniscule kitchens are prone to takeout 'cause there's no place to put the George Forman grill and the CrockPot.
Don't know where I was going with that, though.
Happy Mom's Day to all the Moms (even the Celebrity Moms who lost all their babyweight in less than three months. Hee).
My kitchen is small when I am cooking (like today's Mothers' Day Brunch) but large when I am cleaning (like later today).
It's a miracle kitchen!
littlem, thanks for the nod in that earlier post.
It’s been in studies that families that have meals at home are less likely to be obese so couldn’t having a good kitchen do the opposite. Small kitchen lend themselves to not have the fresh produce out.
I was morbidly obese with my small kitchen and now I am not with the same kitchen. I have to be creative to store my veggies.
The kitchen size doesn’t reflect my weight. I know many people who have huge kitchens and they are not obese.
One thing that I think will help a surprising amount for us is that we're moving into a new house that's literally across the street from a neighborhood supermarket. Its small, but heavily oriented towards organics and healthy foods. This means that fresh veggies will be far more easily obtained than now, where they entail driving 3 miles to the store, doing a bigger shop (to justify the drive), etc. Its a lot easier now to just grab a pack of chips at the quick-e-mart. Not so much, soon.
Good lord. I would KILL for an 80 square foot kitchen. My kitchen is ~20 square feet. Only one person can fit in the space at a time. It actually becomes a hinderance to healthy cooking, since I can't ask my husband to help with prep work.
The funny thing is, houses are getting bigger and bigger kitchens and people are cooking less, instead eating more processed foods and resteraunt meals. The kitchen becomes a place for social snacking, but not a place for serious meal preparation. That's just sad. I wish someone with one of those beautiful generously sized kitchens who eats out all the time would trade kitchens with me. Mine is perfect for the kind of person who only heats up the occasional microwave dinner.
One's kitchen size is irrelavent to how heavy someone will be. what is relevant is how our bodies respond to our dieting efforts of time past, and undereating habits.
Also trying to fool the body into thinking it is getting more caloires then it is getting by eating high volume low cal stuff, doesn't usually work. Except for a few exceptions most bodies know exactly how many caloires you are getting and how much you not getting and responds accordingly.
second the only enviroment that really is the culprit to obesity and weight problems is false information as the true nature of the cause. Everyone knows about setpoint, some agree that it true and some not. some say it is genetically determined, I say it is not automatic but rather is the body's mechnism for dealing with food shortages.
We know how to get it to go up, dieting, restrictive eating, etc, but no one knows how to get it down, even exercise only does so modestly. All they can advise people who want to lose weight is to fight that setpoint. for most people it is a losing battle, for the dieter.
RR
We know how to get it to go up, dieting, restrictive eating, etc, but no one knows how to get it down, even exercise only does so modestly. All they can advise people who want to lose weight is to fight that setpoint. for most people it is a losing battle, for the dieter.
Actually, I and (literally) everyone else who I know personally, as opposed to through the blogosphere, who has lost weight and kept it off for at least a few years, did exactly the same thing. We ate (somewhat) less and exercised (a decent amount) more than we did when we were maintaining a heavier weight. Wrap that up in whatever fancy language you want, but its the one approach I've seen that's amazingly common and effective. No tricks, no real change in food content, just less input and more output.
Unfashionable, I'm sure. And I'm not going to argue that different eating habits don't affect overall physical health. But weight? For the most part, as long as you're not making drastic changes day-to-day to try to (or that accidentally will) throw your body into ketosis (or any other bizarre state), it comes down to simple mathematics.
For that matter, I don't think I've known (again, in person) anyone who's honestly tried that approach -- cutting about 500 calories per day from their "maintenance" level and adding about 10-12 miles of walking (or more, or an equiv. exercise) per week -- who hasn't lost weight, slowly but surely.
A clarification:
I'm not meaning to imply that you cannot lose weight or gain fitness through any other approach; merely trying to say that I think a lot of times we make the process far harder than it has to be by looking for something -- anything -- other than working methodically towards a slow but steady loss. Most of the "tricks" (very low calories, flushing, atkins, etc) either seem to have no (or a negative) effect, or to not last. I'm sure there are some people who have had great luck with them - hey, that's fantastic. But I don't think you need them.
I've lost four pounds since the beginning of the month by exercising every day and cutting my calorie consumption by about 25%. As long as I burn more calories than I eat, the weight comes off. (Setpoint? What setpoint?)
I see their point. When I'm in the kitchen, I do eat: it's true. When I'm upstairs at my computer (which is all the time) I don't think about the food. Until I get hungry...
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