Environment and Behavior

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Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes :

Influences of Microscale Built Environments on Food Intake
Jeffery Sobal and Brian Wansink
Environment and Behavior 2007 39: 124
DOI: 10.1177/0013916506295574

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 Environment and Behavior
Volume 39 Number 1
January 2007 124-142
2007 Sage Publications
Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, 10.1177/0013916506295574
http://eab.sagepub.com
Platescapes, and Foodscapes hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Influences of Microscale Built

Environments on Food Intake
Jeffery Sobal
Brian Wansink
Cornell University

Built environments at many scales influence the type and amount of food con-
sumed. Macroscale food systems and food landscapes influence food choices,
and microscale rooms, furniture, containers, and objects influence food intake.
The authors review literature about how four ubiquitous microscale built envi-
ronments are persistent but often unrecognized influences on food intake.
Kitchenscapes influence food intake through availability, diversity, and visibility
of foods; tablescapes through variety, abundance, and accessibility; platescapes
through portion and/or package size, arrangement, and utensil type; and food-
scapes through food-item forms and landmarks. Microgeographies of built envi-
ronments provide a subtle, pervasive, and often unconscious influence on food
choices, food intake, obesity, and health. Reengineering built environments may
offer opportunities to shape food intake.

Keywords: external cues; food; foodscape; kitchenscape; obesity; platescape;

tablescape

O besity is the presence of high levels of stored body fat that occurs
when caloric intake exceeds caloric expenditure. Considerable profes-
sional and public concern exists about rising obesity levels around the
world that some have characterized as an obesity epidemic (World Health
Organization [WHO], 1998). Much effort is being put into identifying influ-
ences on obesity and ways to prevent or reverse weight gain. Historically,
most analysis of obesity has focused on the biology and psychology of indi-
viduals. More recently, a systemic perspective has emerged that considers
environmental influences on obesity (Chang & Christakis, 2002). The labels
obesogenic environment (Swinburn, Egger, & Raza, 1999) and toxic food
environments (Brownell & Horgen, 2004) represent the conceptualization

124

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 125

and use of a contextual view about why people gain weight and populations
have become more obese. This article reviews existing literature to identify
and describe how several small-scale components of the built environment
influence food intake in ways that may unknowingly contribute to some
peoples obesity.
Bartuska and Young (1994) stated that The built environment is everything
humanly made, arranged, or maintained (p. 5). Built environments offer per-
vasive settings in which human activities are shaped (Lawrence & Low, 1990).
For example, people in contemporary postindustrial societies spend more than
90% of their lives in buildings (Evans & McCoy, 1998). The built environment
is receiving increasing attention as a system of influences on obesity, primar-
ily in terms of the impact of the built environment on energy expenditure (e.g.,
Booth, Pinkston, & Poston 2005; Frank, Engelke, & Schmid, 2003; Hill &
Peters, 1998; Sobal, 2001). Environmental psychologists place considerable
emphasis on built environments, offering classifications for describing built
environments (McCoy, 2002) and concepts for explaining built environments
and human behaviors. Examples of this include behavior settings (Barker,
1968) that provide norms and expectations for behaviors, and environmental
cues (Rapoport, 1990) that provide an impetus for behaviors.
Built environments provide a context within which food choices are
embedded (Furst, Connors, Bisogni, Sobal, & Falk, 1996; Sobal, Bisogni,
Devine, & Jastran, 2006). Food intake is situationally influenced by the phys-
ical setting and objects contained in the physical setting (Bell & Meiselman,
1995; French, Story, & Jeffery, 2001; Marshall, 1993; Marshall & Bell, 2003;
Meiselman, 1996; Meiselman, Johnson, Reeve, & Crouch, 2000). People eat
in particular places such as kitchens and dining rooms and employ specific
objects (e.g., chairs, utensils) in the process of eating, and these components
(i.e., places and objects) of the built environment shape food intake. As a
result, built environments influence decisions about the types and amounts of
foods selected and eaten that determine energy intakes and influence obesity.
Built environments are multiscalar (Sheppard & McMaster, 2003), exist-
ing in larger and smaller units of analysis ranging from the macroscale to the
microscale (Swinburn et al., 1999). Macroscale built environments include
global or regional marketscapes (Lyson & Green, 1999) that shape food choices
through widely dispersed international food systems that include transportation
networks, agricultural and food industries, and food distribution outlets
(Sobal, 1999; Sobal, Khan, & Bisogni, 1998). These very large-scale built
environments cannot be observed (or even clearly fathomed) at one time by
most individuals and must be represented indirectly through mental and
physical maps or other images. Midscale community and neighborhood built

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126 Environment and Behavior

environments influence food consumption through the presence and form of

food outlets such as supermarkets and restaurants (e.g., Morland, Wing, &
Roux, 2002, Morland, Wing, Roux, & Poole, 2002). Microscale built environ-
ments involve immediate surroundings, including rooms, furniture, objects, and
foods themselves (Lawrence & Low, 1990).

Macroscale Food Environments: Food Landscapes

A core concept in geography is the landscape, which is an evolving term

that has multiple interpretations (Conzen, 2001; Johnson, Gregory, Pratt, &
Watts, 2000; Larkin & Peters, 1983; Mikesell, 1968). Landscapes traditionally
represented the appearance of a particular area or place from one viewpoint,
combining the apparent look of physical and cultural aspects of a place into a
sum total of qualities of the visible features for that scene. Each individual
may read the same landscape differently (Cosgrove & Daniels, 1988; Cosgrove,
1998), and landscapes provide viewsheds (Etzenhouser, Owens, Spalinger, &
Murden, 1998) for individuals to examine for eating opportunities. The popu-
larization of the idea and the term landscape led to considerable development
of other -scape concepts and labels (Aldrich, 1966; Gold, 2002).
Built environments at the community scale provide what are often termed
food landscapes (Guptill & Wilkins, 2002; Isenstadt, 1998) that represent
eating outlets available for choosing foods that determine food provisioning
through shopping (Schuler, 1981; Smith, 1991). The food landscape consid-
ers the foods within the sum of all elements in larger landscapes, and food
landscapes shape the foods that enter a household and that can later be eaten
by particular individuals. Large-scale surveys provide evidence that food land-
scapes may influence food intake and obesity through the number and types
of food outlets available, such as the presence and distribution of supermar-
kets, existence and forms of fast-food restaurants, presence of beverage out-
lets, and so on (e.g., Morland, Wing, & Roux, 2002; LaVeist & Wallace,
2000). These surveys suggest that food landscapes facilitate or constrain par-
ticular dietary patterns and nutrient intake, such as how supermarket locations
shape what people eat (Morland, Wing, Roux, & Poole, 2002).

Microscale Food Environments

Many microscale segments of the built environment influence food

intake at or near the time of actual food consumption. These immediate

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 127

environments influence the phenomenology of activities, priming per-

ceptions and framing interpretations. Microscale -scapes are small-scale
foodspaces such as kitchens and tables (Bove & Sobal, 2006) that make
food available for consumption and provide settings within which food is
perceived in terms of environmental affordances (Gibson, 1979) and then
food is selected and consumed.
Elaborating the concept of landscapes at a microscale suggests that four
-scapes may be particularly important influences on food intake: kitchen-
scapes, tablescapes, platescapes, and foodscapes. Food choices and foods
themselves flow progressively through these units of the built environment.

Kitchenscapes
Rooms are eating contexts contained within architectural structures. Parti-
cular rooms typically operate as behavior settings (Barker, 1968; Schoggen,
1989; Wicker, 1979). The interior appearances and layout of rooms are viewed
as a roomscape (Gold, 2002). Kitchenscapes are one form of roomscape that
offer bounded settings for food consumption (Table 1). Kitchenscapes repre-
sent rooms with the primary purpose of cooking and eating (with dining rooms
and other rooms also being sites of food consumption). Large-scale surveys
reveal that an increasing number of meals are taking place in the kitchen
(Bernard, 1991).
Kitchenscapes and other roomscapes include a variety of physical features
associated with perceived affordances for food consumption, such as size,
fenestration, furniture placement, and ambient conditions. Rooms offer food-
spaces (Bove & Sobal, 2006) that operate as eating places that shape what
foods are available, how food is situated in the room, the barriers and facilita-
tors to food access, and other factors influencing food consumption. Review
of the growing body of research about built environments and food consump-
tion shows that roomscapes influence food intake, with lighting, temperature,
and sound shaping what and how much people consume (Stroebele & De
Castro, 2004).
Proximity or propinquity of foods to an individual within a kitchenscape
is an important influence on food access. Accessibility to foods and bever-
ages within a room shapes how much individuals consume, with experiments
reporting that more accessible foods are consumed more often and in greater
quantities (Engell, Kramer, Malafi, Salomon, & Lesher, 1996). Experimental
studies found that moving candy bowls 6 feet away in the same room
reduced intake by one half and indicated that this was based less on increased
effort required to move a longer distance to the food than giving people the

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128 Environment and Behavior

Table 1
Selected Microscale -Scapes Influencing Food Intake
Scale Scape Example Definition

Room Kitchenscape View and/or appearance of a

room or bounded setting
where food is consumed
Furniture Tablescape View and/or appearance of a
piece of furniture or surface from
which food is consumed
Container Platescape View and/or appearance of a
container from which
food is consumed
Object Foodscape View and/or appearance of an edible
item that will be consumed

opportunity to pause and consider whether they really wanted another piece
of candy (Wansink, Painter, & Lee, 2006).
Visibility of foods within a kitchenscape also influences food intake.
Food sources within a kitchen or dining room make food available in the
form of bowls, dishes, platters, baskets, boxes, bags, pots, jugs, bottles,
cans, and other forms that may be open or closed, near or far, and clear or
opaque. The visibility of food within a room increases the salience of food
to potential food consumers in the room and increases consumption by fail-
ing to provide cues that serve as stopping points in the food consumption
process (Painter, Wansink, & Hieggelke, 2002).
Storage of foods in a kitchenscape occurs in subunits of the room envi-
ronment that offer viewpoints for shelfscapes, pantryscapes, or cabinetscapes
(Beecher, 2001). More visible and more easily obtainable stored foods may
facilitate and promote consumption of those foods. Experimental evidence
suggests that stockpiling of foods in storage units (such as in pantries, cup-
boards, and refrigerators) increases intake (Chandon & Wansink, 2002).
Rooms that contain stockpiled foods increase the likelihood of eating and the
amount eaten because of stock pressure where people consider the costs of
storage and consume more of the stored foods to alleviate those costs. It is
interesting to note that this same set of studies showed that convenient and
inconvenient foods are differently influenced by the pressure of stockpiling.
Convenient, ready-to-eat foods are eaten more frequently when stockpiled;
however, less convenient foods are eaten at a similar rate in greater quantities
on the occasions when those foods are consumed (Chandon & Wansink,
2002).

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 129

A kitchenscapes ambience (Stroebele & De Castro, 2004) offers a com-

plex variety of cues for eating in the form of smell, color, light, temperature,
sound, distractions, and other characteristics that combine and interact to
influence the decisions of what will be served as a meal or eaten as a snack in
the first place. Adding to these issues are the size and shape of home kitchens
themselves, which surveys report are becoming larger and less enclosed
(Hasell & Peatross, 1990). The eating architecture (Horwitz & Singley, 2004)
of home kitchens is changing. Such shifting design changes may modify the
kitchenscape and its connection to the rest of the house, which may facilitate
or inhibit particular decisions to begin and end food consumption.

Tablescapes
Furniture is an important component of the built environment. Furni-
turescapes provide eating contexts within roomscapes. Furniturescapes occur
in a wide variety of forms, including tablescapes (Table 1). Tablescapes repre-
sent the appearance of tables where food is served and eaten (Gold, 2002).
Tablescapes can be characterized along many parameters that can serve as
metrics for assessing influences of affordances on food intake, including
the size, surface material, number and configuration of objects on the table
(including food sources and nonfood items), and the number and relationships
of people at the table. In addition, some ambient conditions of the kitchen-
scape, like lighting, are incorporated into the tablescape. Some characteristics
of tablescapes may facilitate and others may inhibit food consumption.
Visibility of foods on a tablescape facilitates food consumption by
attracting attention to the foods and providing cues to eat (Wansink, Painter,
& Lee, 2006). Often foods are available in collective sources (such as serv-
ing bowls) from which individual portions are distributed. The abundance
(number of sources), ampleness (size of sources), and fullness (emptiness
or saturation of sources) of the tablescape and vessels on the tablescape are
parameters that can influence food intake of individuals who are served or
have access to these communal containers on the tablescape.
The complexity and diversity of the tablescape may also shape food
intake, with the variety of food and nonfood items influencing how much
of what is eaten, when, and by whom. An example is a buffet tablescape
that offers an abundant and ample array of different foods, leading people
to consume higher quantities of food (Maykovich, 1978; Stunkard &
Mazur, 1978). Experiments reveal that when food is clearly organized into
recognizable patterns in a tablescape, people take less for themselves than
when food is presented in a disorganized fashion, and similarly when the

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130 Environment and Behavior

same quantity of food is separated into more different bowls, people serve
themselves more (Kahn & Wansink, 2004).
Social determinants of food accessibility can also be important forces
shaping food intake at the scale of the tablescape (Sobal, 2000). Based on
anthropological research, Gittelsohn (1991) classified serving as allocating
foods according to who serves, the order of serving, the quality of foods
served, the quantity of foods served, the methods of serving (automatic, on
request of the server or recipient, or self-served), and access to second help-
ings. These and other social factors influenced how people at a tablescape
obtain individual food portions from common sources.
Increasing the size of serving bowls causes dramatic rises in consumption
that are often undetected by those who are serving themselves. An experi-
ment revealed that people self-serving snacks from larger (4 quart) serving
bowls took 53% more and ate 59% more than people self-serving from
medium (2 quart) bowls (Wansink & Cheney, 2005). When questioned about
their behavior following the experiment, 87% denied having self-served and
eaten differently based on bowl size (Wansink, 2006; Wansink & Sobal, this
issue). Similar experimental results found that people given 34-oz bowls ver-
sus 17-oz bowls served themselves 31% more ice cream but did not recog-
nize that they had done so (Wansink, Van Ittersum, & Painter, 2006).
Tablescapes offer beauty and symbolism in their styling, arrangement,
and display (Bendiner, 2004; Mitchell, 1999; Pegler, 1991; Siple & Sax,
1982) and also reflect social norms and setting expectations about food
intake (Wilson, 1991) that provide behavioral cues for food intake. For
example, placement of foods in a tablescape can mark personal territories
for eating (Becker & Mayo, 1971). Landmarks such as placemats may
serve as boundaries or borders for individual eating areas that include some
foods and exclude other foods as beyond the frontier of appropriate per-
sonal food choices.

Platescapes
Containers are relatively small objects that are part of the built environ-
ment as small-scale forms of material culture (Ames & Schlereth, 1985).
Many types of vessels are commonly used to contain foods and beverages,
including plates, bowls, glasses, cups, packages, boxes, bags, wrappers,
bottles, jars, cans, and other forms. Platescapes represent the sum of the vis-
ible attributes of a particular plate or similar food container. The form,
design, and other information observed in a platescape can exert many
influences on food intake (Table 1).

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 131

Platescapes are pervasive forms of built environments from which individ-

uals eat directly. Estimates from past experiments suggest that as much as 71%
of the total calories of food people eat is consumed after having been trans-
ferred to an intermediate container, such as a plate, bowl, utensil, or glass
(Wansink, 1996). Plating of foods (Styler, 2006) constructs platescapes by
arranging items to achieve specific food presentations (Pegler, 1991).
Many aspects of food containers provide cues that serve as landmarks to
indicate how much food to consume. Plate shape and size delineate norms for
appropriate amounts of food to eat at a meal. Experiments report that the shape
of glasses and cups influences the amount of liquid a person perceives to be in
a glass (Raghubir & Krishna, 1999), and it has been shown that people pour
greater amounts of a beverage into a wide cup than a tall one, and they con-
sume more from wider containers (Wansink & Van Ittersum, 2003, 2005).
Observational studies show that volume of a container is directly related with
amount of beverage consumed, with larger bowls and cups leading to greater
sip volume (Lawless, Bender, Oman, & Pelletier, 2003).
Across a wide range of contexts it has been shown that people generally
eat approximately 92% of the food that they personally serve themselves
(e.g., Wansink & Cheney, 2005). Because the size of a plate or bowl can
influence how much is served, the size of food portions served to construct a
platescape is related to the amount of food actually consumed. Several exper-
iments reveal that food intake is proportional to the portion served (e.g.,
Levitsky & Youn, 2004; Rolls, Roe, & Meengs, 2006; Young & Nestle, 2002).
In one study, experimenters asked people to pour as much of a cereal as they
would like and gave them 12-, 16-, or 24-oz capacity bowls, with participants
pouring increasing amounts into the bowls (9, 12, and 15 oz, respectively)
while the fill level in the bowls was similar for each bowl size (77%, 74%,
64%, respectively; Wansink & Van Ittersum, 2006). Additional studies report
people eat more from larger forms of other types of containers including pop-
corn boxes (Wansink & Kim, 2005) and canteens (Wansink, Cardello, &
North, 2005). Observational studies reveal that portion sizes available in con-
tainers and served on platescapes is increasing in the United States (e.g.,
Nielsen & Popkin, 2003; Smiciklas-Wright, Mitchell, Mickle, Goldman, &
Cook, 2003). Some plates have culturally appropriate portion size norms built
into the actual plate surface, such as the tripartite plates that have divisions
representing the British and American meal formula of A + 2b (a main food
item plus two side items; Douglas, 1972).
Although as much as 71% of the food consumed in the United States is
estimated to be eaten from an intermediate transfer device (a plate, glass,

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132 Environment and Behavior

spoon, etc.), nearly 30% is believed to be eaten directly from commercial

food packages (Wansink, 1996). The appearance of these packages can be
seen as packagescapes with particular sizes and shapes and with designs
that are composed of words, images, colors, and other attributes. Packages
are viewed by consumers as boxscapes, bagscapes, canscapes, bottlescapes,
and other types. Consumers frequently eat foods directly from the packages
in which they were purchased, and a container is often perceived as a nat-
ural consumption unit (Geier, Rozin, & Doros, 2006). Package size influ-
ences consumption, with experiments finding that people eat more from
larger packages (Wansink, 1996) irrespective of the taste of the food
(Wansink & Kim, 2005). Although large packages generally offer a low
cost per unit of food, they encourage purchase of an oversupply that leads
to overeating as people finish up the entire content of packages to avoid
waste (Wansink, 1996). Package labelling has become an important part
of the packagescape of most manufactured food products, and experi-
ments report that labels often encourage greater food intake (Wansink &
Chandon, 2006; Wansink & Park, 2002) that may influence obesity by
increasing the amount of food ingested (Wansink, Van Ittersum, & Painter,
2004).
Eating moves food from plates and other containers into the mouth.
Transfer of food from containers to mouths may occur in several ways,
involving different uses of the built environment that can influence types
and amounts of food intake. Transfer may occur directly from a container
(sipping, biting, licking, gulping, etc.), using hands as transfer implements,
or using food utensils (knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks, and straws).
Utensils vary in type, size (width, length, weight, volume), material (metal,
plastic, and wood), and design (style and color). Food transfers using
objects in the built environment for food intake can facilitate or inhibit the
amount of food ingested, for example as shovelling food into your
mouth or guzzling beverages. Research about the effect of using imple-
ments in food intake is not as extensive as study of containers. One obser-
vational study reported that the use of straws leads to smaller sip volume
than drinking directly from cups (Lawless et al., 2003). An experiment
found that even nutrition experts who were given 3-oz capacity serving
spoons at an ice cream social served themselves 14.5% more than those
who had been given 2-oz serving spoons (Wansink, Van Ittersum, &
Painter, 2006). Another experiment reported that children dealt with larger
food portions by taking more food onto their implements (Fisher, Rolls, &
Birch, 2003).

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 133

Foodscapes
Foods are objects that are typically prepared before eating, and foods
themselves constitute small-scale components of the built environment.
Foodscapes represent the view of a particular food object, as seen in the
sum appearance of the foods visual features (Gold, 2002). Foodscapes
describe the landscape of particular food items themselves, and they are
represented by the facade of particular edible things. Some analysts use the
term foodscape to label the food landscape (e.g., Cumming & Macintyre,
2002; Holloway & Kneafsey, 2000; Jakle & Sculle, 1999; Yasmeen, 1995),
although that usage is incongruent with geographical landscape terminol-
ogy because in that use the root term food is not a spatial concept appro-
priate for combining with -scape.
A considerable body of observational and experimental research reveals
that most people are poor judges of actual portion sizes of foods (e.g.,
Harnack, Steffen, Arnett, Gao, & Luepker, 2004; Wansink, Painter, & Lee,
2006). Foodscape characteristics, including the volume of food presented,
may explain at least part of the variation between perception and reality
(Chandon & Wansink, 2006). Foodscapes have many dimensions that may
influence food intake. Foodscape parameters include size, shape, texture,
colors, and other qualities and may include other attributes such as divi-
sions or demarcations apparent on the surface of the food (Table 1).
Size of a foodscape is directly related to greater intake, with a review of
existing studies revealing that people consume most of the food that they per-
sonally take or receive (Wansink, 2004, 2006). At the time of consumption,
most foods do not have other foods nearby for comparison. Consumers there-
fore lose an important benchmark that may provide a contrasting example
that would otherwise permit them to consciously recognize whether they are
eating a large or small apple, muffin, or other food item. Experiments reveal
that the norm is to consume the food in its entirety (Geier et al., 2006). Some
experiments reveal that smaller food units are eaten more slowly than larger
food units; however, eating bite-sized food pieces is not necessarily related
to total intake of that food (Spiegel, 2000).
Shape of a food involves the proportions and configuration of the food-
scape. Experiments reveal that a sphere appears smaller than a flattened rec-
tangular sheet, so that circular foods are more likely to be fully consumed
than square ones (Krider, Raghubir, & Krishna, 2001). Experimental evi-
dence shows that amorphous food shapes are particularly difficult to estimate
(Slawson & Eck, 1997). Such nebulous food shapes may present foodscapes
that are problematic to assess and evaluate for cues about how much to eat
because they provide few visual anchors to guide rate of eating or place to

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134 Environment and Behavior

end consumption. For example, a scoop of mashed potatoes appears smaller

than the same amount of potatoes that is spread out, and the scoop may be
eaten faster and consumed entirely more than a more sprawling portion.
Textures in a foodscape provide important visual information that can be
used in making food intake decisions. Smooth foodscape surfaces offer no
obvious places for an observing gaze to pause. Patterned foodscapes offer
landmarks for eaters to use in distinguishing and dividing food items
into segments or sections. Foodscapes with differentiated surfaces facilitate
judgments about size. They can also influence decisions about individual
bites by offering marks that can help suggest whether to consume the whole
food item or only part of it. For example, chocolate bars with sectional
markings built into their foodscape have designations for individual bites to
guide consumption. Even and uneven textures and patterns in foodscapes
let eaters map the food items into subportions to use in the process of eat-
ing. One experiment reported that restaurant patrons used less butter than
olive oil on bread (Wansink & Linder, 2003). Butter provides a visible new
texture when added to the surface of the bread, providing boundaries
demarking serving size, whereas the olive oil does not change the texture
of the breads foodscape and therefore does not create markers to guide
bites and use as stopping points for consumption. Overall, from the criss-
crossed waffle to the multicomponent lasagna, textures in foodscapes offer
guidance for the amount of food to consume.
Patterns of markings on foodscapes provide important cues for intake.
Visual indicators may operate as signs that differentiate segments of some
foods, such as decorative toppings or grill marks that delineate sections in
the foodscape of some foods. Other foodscapes are marked with spices or
condiments that permit eaters to visually section the foods and to use those
demarcations to guide the rate and amount of eating. Colors of a particular
foodscape also serve to map its surface. A monochromatic surface provides
few cues about when to start or stop eating. In contrast, stripes, swirls, and
segmented colors may be used to decide where to eat from and the size (and
number) of bites to take. A series of experiments by Kahn and Wansink
(2004) found that high-variety assortments of different colored foods led to
greater food consumption.

Conclusion

Humans are continually immersed in built environments, and the micro-

geography of the built environment is a persistent, contextual influence on

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 135

food intake. In the drama and distractions of a persons daily life, eating is
often a mundane, mindless, routine activity, and environmental influences
occur in a subtle and unconscious way that is usually not discernable or rec-
ognized by most people as they eat (Wansink, 2004, 2006). Kitchenscapes,
tablescapes, platescapes, and foodscapes may appear less prodigious than
global food systems or community food landscapes; however, their univer-
sal prevalence influences how much food people eat. Bite by bite, these
microscale -scapes influence nutrient and calorie intake, and they have an
impact on subsequent body weight and health.
A variety of explanations suggest mechanisms by which the built envi-
ronments of kitchenscapes, tablescapes, platescapes, and foodscapes may
influence food intake in many different ways (Wansink, 2004). Particular
parameters of built environments may influence perceptions and interpreta-
tions about food consumption, provide distractions or inhibit self-monitor-
ing of intake, or increase salience and provide convenience that facilitates
eating. Proximate settings provide environmental cues about appropriate
consumption that influence food intake (Rapoport, 1990), often communi-
cating intake norms to people who act on those influences in unconscious
ways (Wansink, Painter, & North, 2005). The built environment offers land-
marks for framing perceptions, gauging the appropriate extent of consump-
tion behavior, and offering indicators for food intake cessation. Some
environments are distracting enough to prevent or minimize consumption
monitoring (Wansink & Kim, 2005). Some studies show that particular
behavior settings are associated with eating schema that include scripts for
what to eat and how much to consume (e.g., Cherulnik, 1991; Wansink,
2006). The various explanations for influences of the built environment on
food intake may operate individually, interact with each other, or selectively
operate under particular conditions such as being operable at one scale and
not another scale.
Further research on these microscale built environments needs to test
and compare theoretical explanations about how places and objects influ-
ence food behaviors. It is important to note that built environments do not
lead to physical determinism of food intake (Franck, 1984); however, these
built environments do exert partial influences on what and how much is
consumed for particular times, places, and people.
Further thinking about multiscalarity of -scapes may offer useful insights
about eating and other types of behaviors. Different scales of -scapes are
embedded within each other, which suggests that multiscalar processes occur
in behaviors such as food choices. The process of eating involves attention to
foodscapes, platescapes, tablescapes, and kitchenscapes for information about

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136 Environment and Behavior

when to begin and end consumption. People can engage in the process of
-scape switching when they ascertain how much to eat as they examine a
foodscape to identify how much of that food they have, compare amounts of
different foods on their platescape, scan the tablescape to see if other food sup-
plies are available, inspect the kitchenscape for further stores of food, and
think about the available and accessible sources present in the local food
landscape. This process of perceptual and cognitive foregrounding and back-
grounding of the focus of attention provides input into food decisions. -Scape
switching requires more effort than remaining focused on one scale. Thus
individuals may be more likely to finish food on their plates but not switch
from the platescape to the tablescape to add more from a serving source on the
table. For example, one study found that people were more likely to drink
additional water from their own glasses but tended to not refill their glass from
a pitcher elsewhere in the room (Engell et al., 1996).
Environmental psychologists and behavioral geographers have consider-
able potential for collaboration (Kitchin, Blades, & Golledge, 1997), and the
intersections of the geographical concept of landscape and the psychological
concept of built environment at the microscale may offer a useful site for
future interdisciplinary work. Extending the more macroscale concept of land-
scape into the microscales of rooms, furniture, containers, and objects extends
the conceptual range of ideas about landscapes for geographers. Linking the
theories psychologists use for explaining built environments with the spatial
perspectives about landscapes used by geographers offers new considerations
for environmental influences on behavior to their conceptual tools. Food stud-
ies offer a fertile area for making these connections; however, joint thinking
about landscapes and built environments also may be useful to pursue for other
substantive topics, including exercise, rehabilitation, recovery, and other issues
related to health and other topics.
This analysis of microscale built environments and food intake offers
new concepts that may be useful in providing a systematic vocabulary for
examining how the built environment influences food choices that are
crucial determinants of obesity. Additional conceptual work can further
develop theoretical perspectives about the influence of the built environ-
ment on food choices, considering social, cognitive, behavioral, and physi-
ological explanations. Much research remains to be done on the built
environment and food choices, including multiple approaches using obser-
vational, survey, and experimental work in the laboratory and natural set-
tings (Meiselman, 1992).
Macroscale food systems and food landscapes may provide opportuni-
ties for interventions to promote healthier food intake by using structural

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 Sobal, Wansink / Kitchenscapes, Tablescapes, Platescapes, and Foodscapes 137

solutions in community planning that employ policy tools such as taxes and
zoning. However, these societal and community interventions are often com-
plex and difficult to implement. Furthermore, exclusive focus on food sys-
tems and landscapes outside the home may contribute to a deterministic or
fatalistic view about how much influence individuals have over their own
food intakes.
In contrast to macrolevel applications, it is also possible to engineer
microscale built environments inside the home to provide individuals with
personal ways to control their eating behaviors. Such small-scale interven-
tions may encourage individuals to reengineer their own environments to
work for them rather than against them in shaping food intake (Wansink,
2006). Further understanding of kitchenscapes, tablescapes, platescapes,
and foodscapes may offer useful strategies that can be applied in built
environment design changes and individual behavioral changes that influ-
ence food selection, food intake, and ultimately body weight and health.

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142 Environment and Behavior

Jeffery Sobal is a professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. His
research examines how social factors operate in relationship to body weight, food choice, and
food systems.

Brian Wansink, an Iowa native, holds the John S. Dyson Chair of Marketing and of
Nutritional Science in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell
University (www.FoodPsychology.Cornell.edu), where he is director of the Cornell Food and
Brand Lab. His research examines how environmental cues such as portion size, plate size, and
glass shape influence food consumption.

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