12 KITCHEN DESIGN TIPS FOR HEALTHY EATING
Everyone knows that proper nutrition is the key to a healthy and active life, but not everyone realizes how our eating habits are sometimes interrelated with the space in which we cook and eat our food. In the books “Slim by Design” and “Mindless Eating” the author Brian Wansink focused his attention on the relationship between environmental design and food consumption culture. His conclusions mainly concern visible zones (we eat what we see), the rules of the “golden shelf” of the fridge, and the size of the dishes. We went further and supplemented his findings with practical advice from the personal experience of the Ohra Studio interior design team.
12 KITCHEN TIPS:
1.“Closed” kitchen furniture. When planning or ordering furniture, make the kitchen cabinets more closed. According to Wansink’s research, we eat 20% of food simply because it comes into our eyes. Therefore, hide all harmful food in cabinets, and “promote” fruits, vegetables and water by giving them a central, very visible position in your kitchen.
2. Clean and tidy. Keep the kitchen and dining table clean. When you are in a messy out-of-control place, it gives you an excuse to say “Whatever?!” or “Who will notice?!” and eat too much. Also try to take away leftovers to the refrigerator and closed cabinets immediately after eating, the chaos on the table after a meal also inclines us to overeat.
3. Small plates. As many nutritionists believe, it is enough for a person to eat at one time exactly as much food as is placed in his or her palm. When choosing dishes, give preference to small pure white plates. According to Brian Wansink, we eat 20–25% more food from large plates, and the color patterns of the dishes create the same messy effect from the previous paragraph.
4. Refrigerator. Follow the principle of the “golden shelf” when placing food in the refrigerator. “Golden shelf”, in the terminology of supermarket workers, is the shelf, which is at the level of the buyer’s eyes. Everything that the supermarket is interested to sell us is there because we recognize and choose exactly those goods that we see most often. According to this rule, place all healthy food — vegetables, fish, eggs — on the “golden shelf” of your refrigerator, at your eye level. Hide everything harmful, sweet, and fizzy above or below it.
5. Get rid of TV and comfort seats! Remove or turn off the TV, IPad, and all comfy chairs from the kitchen and dining area. US research shows that people spend 18–20 minutes less time in less loungy kitchens and dining rooms. Watching TV or Internet content distracts from the process of eating, makes us give less importance to food, and the feeling of fullness comes much later.
6. Restaurant VS Fast-Food. Have you noticed that the colors and music in the restaurants are very calm and muffled, while the interiors of the fast-food cafes are always very bright, filled with active pop-music? It’s not just about the contingent or the age of visitors. Bright colors and fast music stimulate rapid excitation, including appetite arousal and doing everything faster — hence the term “fast food” so you also leave the restaurant quicker. However, the rapid absorption of food allows us to eat much more before the saturation comes. Design your kitchen with the nobility of the restaurant — in calm colors. The food eaten in such an atmosphere will seem like a masterpiece, and you will be satisfied with a much smaller quantity.
7. Color and shade. Throwing bright colors away, we want to turn your attention to shades. Cold shades of any colors will oppress the appetite, warm and dark shades, on the contrary, will awaken it. If you want to eat less, repaint the dining room in your favorite color but in its cold shade. In this sense, white is the most versatile and comfortable color, for good reason it has become the main color of Scandinavian design.
8. Home plants. Potted plants not only give comfort and more air to our homes. Researchers notice that the presence of a large number of home plants in the interior of the kitchen also encourages us to eat and cook green food, and this is mainly greens, vegetables and fruits, olive oil. If you don’t like plants — wallpapers with all sorts of palm and tropical prints will come to help you. The atmosphere they bring will make you not only eat well, but also feel at home like in an oasis!
9. And again the restaurant tips. This culture knows all the secrets about our diet. So let us take a note of the next one. For example, everyone knows that the feeling of fullness does not come immediately after a meal, that is why it is recommended to chew food longer and generally eat more slowly. This is all true, but to complicate the task we recommend using a knife and fork, even while eating at home. These “aristocratic” manipulations with the cutlery will not only give chic to your meal, but also significantly reduce the speed of eating.
10. More mirrors! In order to eat well and healthy, place a mirror opposite the dining table. And add one more mirror to the cooking zone. When we look in the mirror at what we eat or cook, we kind of watch ourselves from the side, and from the side we all want to seem better. And we simply want to see ourselves eating better!
11. Lighter. When you plan the kitchen space, try to place the table and working area closer to the window, in addition, add lamps, pendants, and wall lamps there too, the more, the better. Scientists have conducted a series of studies and noticed a very interesting behaviour — we eat 25–30% more food in darker rooms than we do in better-lit kitchens or dining rooms. In the dark, it seems, we do not see so well how much food we eat, hence we end up eating more! The more light is present in meal areas, the more responsible we are with our meals!
12. Happiness. The most important study shows that happy people in general eat healthier, paying more attention to what they eat. On the contrary, unhappy people eat everything striving to seize up the grief as a natural response to the stress “fight or flight” reaction. Try not to sit at the table in a state of irritation or anger mood, first calm down, breathe easy, and then allow yourself to act responsibly — eating. Friends make us happy. In times of stress invite a friend or several friends to join your dinner. They will understand you and remind you of how much you are worth as a person and how positive your appearance is! You will eat with pleasure, and a good conversation over dinner will make it healthier! Or you can decorate your dining room with some photos of your friends and family to eat always in a good mood.
It turns out that the organization of the kitchen, its cooking zone, and the decoration of the dining room can not only help us eat properly and healthy but also make us a little happier. A bright and light kitchen space, clean and calm, filled with the freshness of plants, furniture from natural materials, favourite photos, and paintings — is the dream of every family! Eat right and fill your interiors with beauty and health!
With our help, your dreams easily become a reality!
