Ha! Another study just proved my theory was right.  You can have greater success on your healthy eating plan by making it easier on yourself.

In an article appearing in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital  researchers did a study to find out what influenced the workers to opt for the foods they chose. Their goal was to get the workers who ate in the hospital cafeteria to pick healthier foods.

Keep in mind that these workers included doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who should have known enough about nutrition to make smart choices, so it wasn’t a case of lack of education.  It also included workers in housekeeping and other hospital workers, so there was a wide socio-economic range and a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds.  On the whole it was a representative group.

The researchers tried listing the calorie count and health data on the labels.  No results.  The workers still chose on the basis of habit and taste.

Then the researchers color-coded the foods. They put green stickers on the healthier choices, yellow on the less healthy, and red on the worst-for-you foods.  It apparently helped some.  People who wanted to lose weight could make decisions with very little effort. They didn’t have to read and evaluate anything —  just pick by color.

Then they went a step farther and arranged the foods so that it would be easiest to pick the ones that were healthiest.  That worked.  People started eating lower glycemic, lower calorie foods when they were the most convenient.  When the researchers put the sodas in the most inaccessible place, people quit drinking them so much and opted for water which was handy.

How can this study affect you?  I’m sure you are no different than the hospital workers. Unless you are highly motivated, you will make choices on what is most convenient.  So make the best choices the most convenient.

I recommend you use my chart on the the right of the page to determine which foods are lowest on the glycemic scale and put those green foods in the easiest-to-reach place.  Make the yellow-for-caution foods at the back of the refrigerator and make the red-for-stop foods really inconvenient.

Try preparing snacks in the morning and having them ready to grab when you are tired and struck by the munchies.  If the berries are washed and sitting in a bowl at eye level in the refrigerator you will be more likely to eat them than if they are buried in the crisper drawer still wrapped in plastic.  It’s better not to have highly processed, sugary foods around, but if you have naturally skinny family members who insist on buying them, store them tied up in a plastic grocery sack and put them behind the mixer on the top shelf of the pantry.  Or the equivalent at your house.

Make eating the right foods convenient and make the stuff that will raise your blood sugar through the roof as hard to get to as possible.  It worked for the hospital employees.  I imagine it will work for you, too.

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown