Science has a simple and incredible trick that will help you lose weight. The idea, it seems, is to make portions appear bigger because this leads people to serve and eat less.
While many such fat-fighting claims are fake, this idea is that a fiction can have a real effect. We know that bigger portions lead us to eat more (bite-sized version here), but portions that appear bigger have a reverse effect.
Visual illusions have long fascinated humans but mostly they are viewed as problems to be explained. Philosophers study them for the challenges they offer to the nature of being (ontology) and of knowledge (epistemology).
Nouvelle cuisine is often criticised as providing tiny portions Shutterstock*
