A larger glass of wine — not the amount in the glass, but the size of the glassware itself — might make you drink more. In a new study, researchers found there was a 9.4 per cent increase in wine sales (and presumably, wine consumption) when a bar switched to using larger wine glasses.
There was no difference in sales when the wine glasses were standard-size compared with when they were smaller, the researchers noted in their study, published on Monday (June 6) in the journal BMC Public Health. In the study, researchers tracked purchases in a bar-restaurant over the course of 16 weeks, during which different sizes of wine glasses were used. Patrons were typically served about 5.9 ounces (175 milliliters) of wine, but the glasses were one of three different sizes: small (8.4 oz., or 250 mL), standard (10.1 oz., or 300 mL) or large (12.5 oz., or 370 mL).
It isn’t clear why people would drink more when glasses are larger, but the authors offered a possible explanation. “One reason may be that larger glasses change our perceptions of the amount of wine, leading us to drink faster and order more,” Rachel Pechey, a public health research associate at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the lead author of the study, said in a statement. “But it’s interesting that we didn’t see the opposite effect when we switched to smaller wine glasses.”
Source: www.livescience.com
