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You probably already know to bring your salad plate up to the buffet to avoid overeating. But here's something you probably never thought of: You'll be able to limit portion sizes even more effectively if your plate doesn't match the color of your food. A study recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research (by one of our favorite food behavior experts, Brian Wansink) found that people were more likely to load up their plates with spaghetti and sauce if they were using red plates (the same theory would also lead them to put bigger hunks of buttered cornbread on yellow plates, or scoop giant helpings of pesto on green plates). This has something to do with the way the food appears to blend into the plate color, which creates the illusion of a smaller portion size. The researchers advise us to look for high contrasts between the color of our food and our tableware. So stick with white plates for just about all of those buffet party foods...except for Grandma's coconut cream pie.

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