Open floor plans may lead to more eating | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Open floor plans may lead to more eating Open floor plans may lead to more eating Published: September 08, 2016 Author: Michael O. Garvey No competent food critic reviews a restaurant without taking into consideration the ambience of the place, because whether or not a meal is enjoyable greatly depends upon the environment in which it is served. According to Kim Rollings, assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, dining environments can have even more serious consequences for eating behaviors, and in an article published recently in the journal Environment and Behavior she and Nancy Wells, an environmental psychologist from Cornell University, describe some of them. The article, “Effects of Floor Plan Openness on Eating Behaviors,” concerns a study Rollings and Wells conducted with 57 college students in the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell. The study made use of folding screens to manipulate the arrangement of kitchen and dining areas during the service of buffet-style meals, and two-way mirrors for the unobtrusive observation of variously sized groups of student diners. “Although more research is needed,” Rollings said, “the results of our study suggest that the openness of a floor plan, among many other factors, can affect how much we eat. Eating in an ‘open concept kitchen,’ with greater visibility and convenience of food access, can set off a chain reaction. We’re more likely to get up and head toward the food more often, serve more food and eat more food.” Kim Rollings Rollings noticed that each time college students in the study got up to get more food, they ended up eating an average of 170 more calories in the “open” than in the “closed” floor plan kitchen. “Considering that decreasing calorie consumption by 50 to 100 calories per day can reduce or avoid the average annual weight gain of one to two pounds among U.S. adults,” she said, “these results have important implications for designers of and consumers in residential kitchens; college, workplace and school cafeterias and dining areas; and buffet-style restaurants.” Not so long ago, most American kitchens were separate, enclosed spaces, purely functional and not intended for entertaining. “Now,” Rollings said, “open-concept plans put kitchens on display, which is great for entertaining, but not necessarily for our waistlines. Serving food out of sight from diners in an open kitchen, serving food from a counter in a closed kitchen rather than from a dining table, and creating open kitchens that have the ability to be enclosed may help U.S. adults maintain their weight.” Rollings said that the study findings have important implications not only for college and university students, but also for people who need to eat in health care, group home and military settings. Contact: Kim Rollings, 574-631-4105, krolling@nd.edu Posted In: Research Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 05, 2022 Astrophysicists find evidence for the presence of the first stars October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 29, 2022 Notre Dame, Ukrainian Catholic University launch three new research grants September 27, 2022 Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin engineers join to advance novel treatment for cystic fibrosis September 22, 2022 Climate-prepared countries are losing ground, latest ND-GAIN index shows For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn