It seems controlling the amount one eats at a restaurant has an extremely simple solution: Use a bigger fork. Yes, forget portion sizes and how they influence diners’ consumption and look at fork size, instead. So say researchers Arul and Himanshu Mishra and Tamara Masters, who conducted field research into how bite sizes affect quantities ingested.
As first reported in the June 19, 2011, Daily Star (Lebanon), the research team focused on a popular Italian restaurant in the Southwestern U.S. Two sets of forks were set to work--one, the larger, held 20% more food than the fork usually used in the restaurant, and the smaller held 20% less.