De-Size Me

Via Sully we see what might be the most obvious, simplest idea there is - allowing people to downsize their meals at fast-food restaurants:

We carried out this intervention before and after calorie labels were put in place, and found that while calorie labels had no effect on the number of calories consumed, the offer to downsize did! As much as a third of the customers who were given the offer decided to take less food (compared to ~1% who asked to downsize on their own) and consequently ate less (yes, we even weighed their leftovers), showing that a simple offer to downsize can go a long way toward encouraging a healthier diet. The conclusion:  Offering people a chance to exercise self control can be effective, but we need to stop people, slow them down and offer them to take a better path at the moment when they are placing their order.

My bold.  If you give me a second to think and make a choice, I might do the right thing; once it's on the tray, I'm shoving it down my maw if I need to use a goddam shoehorn.