We all know about the secret “dessert compartment,” the part of you that stays empty for dessert. Well, no scientist has proven that this body part exists, but sometimes even when we feel full, we find room for new food that excites our taste buds more than food we’ve already tasted. In fact, when people eat at a buffet — a long table with lots of foods — they eat more food if they keep walking up to try more foods than if they fill their plate once with a bunch of choices. And in one famous study, people whose soup bowls were secretly refilling with more soup from the bottom ate 73% more soup (almost double) than people who ate from one steady serving!
Wee ones: If at a buffet you eat chicken, potatoes, corn, string beans, and chocolate cake, how many foods do you eat?
Little kids: If you’ve tried 5 types of pasta from the buffet and then the kitchen brings out 2 kinds of cupcakes, how many types of food can you try in total? Bonus: If you try 9 foods and eat 10 bites of each, how would you count up the bites by 10s?
Big kids: If 7 soup eaters each eat 7 bowls of soup, how many bowls do they eat together? Bonus: The always-full bowls ate about 3/4 more soup than people eating from just one big bowl to start. So if you ate 20 spoons of soup, about how many did the endless-soup eaters eat?
Answers:
Wee ones: 5 foods.
Little kids: 7 types of food. Bonus: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90.
Big kids: 49 bowls. Bonus: 35 spoons…a quarter of 20 is 5 spoons, so adding 3 of those chunks means adding on 15.
