October 7/New York/Huffington Post -- Adults who become habituated on a snack (like, say, macaroni and cheese) eat less when they are exposed to the same food over and over again than when they have it intermittently. However, new research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests the same is true for children and snack foods: the more familiar kids were with a snack, the better able they were to predict how full they would feel after eating, and thus they chose a more appropriate portion size.
Seventy kids participated in the study, using a computer program to rank how full they thought they would get from each of six snack items and how frequently they ate it. Through this method, the researchers also found that if the snack food was unfamiliar to the group of 11- and 12-year-olds, they were likely to rely on visual cues -- like volume -- to decide how full they would feel, which led to larger portions.