Are Our Kitchens Making Us Fat?

Blatner generally admires the trend toward big, open kitchens, which she says foster positive feelings about cooking and discourage people from eating high-calorie takeout or going to restaurants, where portions are almost always too large. But she's not crazy about using the kitchen as an ersatz media center or office space. "Americans become very mindless when they eat while watching TV, paying the bills, answering the phone, doing e-mails," she says. "When we put all those tasks in the middle of the kitchen, with all that food around, we're creating a recipe for a lot of mindless munching."

And as for those large central islands: "One of the worst things that can befall any diet is the buffet. The idea of making a buffet every night in your home is just a disaster waiting to happen. I see about a hundred patients a month for weight-management issues. One of the first things we suggest is that people stop eating 'family style,' where they keep the food out on the island and tell people to help themselves. Rather, we really want people to put one serving on a plate, take it out of the kitchen, and eat it in a dining room. If food is in our sight, it will most likely end up in our mouth."

Edward Abramson, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University at Chico and the author of "Body Intelligence," a book on personal weight management, agrees. "There's ample evidence that a lot of eating is precipitated by external cues -- not so much physical cues, or even the joy of eating per se, but rather the sight of other people eating, or even the mere sight or smell of food," he says.

Sounds like an argument for going back to the olden days, when every kitchen had a door, and Mom told you to stay on the other side of it while she prepared dinner. Or once dinner was over, for that matter.

"Kitchens were more narrowly defined [back then], and therefore if you went into the kitchen outside of the defined, acceptable times -- if someone caught you standing in front of the refrigerator gobbling food late at night, for instance -- that could be a little embarrassing," Abramson says. "People would sometimes take their snacks and stand over the kitchen sink, so they didn't leave any incriminating plates as evidence."

But few are actually advocating a return to the kitchen as a no-loitering zone. Instead, some young designers, like Lorna Kelly, a 21-year-old student at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, are imagining kitchens of the future that are both dynamic living spaces and geared toward good health.

Last year, Kelly took part in an international kitchen-design collaboration for which she conceived a kitchen that could, in her words, "encourage people to cook healthily and be conducive to weight loss." Her submission, which she acknowledges is still very theoretical, included a vegetable steamer built into the kitchen counter, making this most healthful of cooking appliances an integral part of the kitchen -- like the refrigerator or the microwave -- rather than something pushed to the back of a cupboard. Next to it, also built into the countertop, is an easy-to-clean blender designed for smoothies: "You blend the smoothie in the cup, and then consume it in the same cup you blended it in," says Kelly.

Walls in Kelly's concept kitchen are actually floor-to-ceiling LCD screens; cooking tutorials could be called up from a computerized network on demand, so that the likes of British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver might walk you through the preparation of a healthy meal, as though he were right there with you. The same computer system could record and track calorie and nutrition information, compile your shopping list, and even e-mail that list to your local grocery store -- which could deliver your order within the hour.

"Or you could go pick it up yourself," says Kelly. "We don't want to be too lazy."