Health: 5 ways to shed those kilos by adopting different eating methods

Eat food from a red plate: Serving up meals on red plates or drinking from red cups cuts consumption by about 40 per cent, German and Swiss scientists have found. They say the colour red may encourage diners to avoid snacking because it is commonly associated with the idea of 'danger, prohibition and stop.' In the study, 41 male students were asked to drink tea from cups marked with red or blue labels. They drank 44 per cent less from cups with red labels. In the second part of the study, 109 people were given ten pretzels each on either a red, blue or white plate. Those with a red plate ate fewer pretzels.

Drink a pint of water a day: Researchers from an university in the UK have shown that drinking 500ml of water half-an-hour before eating the three main meals of the day may help you lose weight. For the study, obese adult participants were recruited from general practices and monitored over a 12-week period. While half of them (41 adults) of those recruited were asked to preload with water, the other half ( 43 adults) were advised to imagine that they had a full stomach before eating. Those in the group who were instructed to 'preload' with water lost, on average, 1.3 kg more than those in the control group. Those who reported preloading before all three main meals in the day reported a loss of 4.3 kg over the 12 weeks, whereas those who only preloaded once, or not at all, only lost an average of 0.8kg.

Just listen to the sound of chewing: If you want to eat less, pull out your earbuds, stop the music system and switch off the television before heading to the dining table, and tune into the sweet sound of your food while it is being chewed. Researchers from an American university have found that the noise your food makes while you are eating can have a significant effect on how much food you eat. For the study, the team carried out three separate experiments on the effect of that "food sound salience" and discovered that people eat less when the sound of the food is more intense. Researchers compared how much participants ate while listening to loud music to those who were not disturbed by music while eating their snacks and found that the louder noise masked the sound of chewing and that group ate more -- four pretzels compared to 2.75 pretzels for the "quiet" group.

Have a light lunch: New research shows that opting for a light lunch can stave off hunger pangs while helping you lose around 11 kilos in a year. Researchers at an university in the US monitored the daily diets of 17 volunteers. For the first week of the study, participants ate from a buffet for their meals and snacks, while researchers tallied up calories consumed. The next two weeks, half the group was asked to pick from one of six pre-packaged portion-controlled foods, such as soups or pasta meals, but could eat whatever they wanted from the buffet the rest of the day. The remainder of the participants continued eating whatever they wished from the buffet. The volunteers who ate portion-controlled lunches consumed 250 fewer calories per day, losing an average of 1.1 pounds (about half a kilo) over the course of two weeks.

Drinking tea might help: Recently conducted tests have found that regular consumption of tea also suppressed damaging changes in the blood linked to fatty foods that can lead to type-2 diabetes. In the study some mice were given a high fat diet and others a normal diet. Each of these two groups were then split into smaller groups and given water, black tea or green tea for 14 weeks. Both types of tea suppressed body weight gain and the build-up of belly fat linked to a fatty diet. But black tea, which is used in most ordinary cuppas, also counteracted the harmful effects on the blood normally associated with a high-fat diet. These included increases in cholesterol, high blood glucose and insulin resistance - a precursor to type-2 diabetes where the body does not efficiently use the insulin it produces.