Larger Glasses Spills More Wine Into Drinker's Stomach

People who prefer to drink wine in bigger glasses should pay attention as they might end up sipping more quantities than desired. These are the findings of a new study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

According to the researchers, spacious wine glasses could make people sip more wine at a pace faster than usual. The researchers say that restaurants and bars that serve drinks in large glasses cause people to drink more, even when the quantity of the drink does not vary.

A research team led by Marcis Munafo studied the serving pattern for a period of 16 weeks at a dual bar and restaurant called The Pint Shop in Cambridge. During the course of the study period, the bar owner alternated between three different capacities of glasses for serving drinks - standard 300 ml, a larger 370 ml and a smaller 250 ml.

The team discovered that people tend to buy more drinks if the wine was being served in larger glasses. In addition, the amount of the wine was significantly higher. Overall, people bought 9.4 percent more wine when the wine was served in a 370 ml glass instead of a 300 ml glass.

The team thus found that "increasing the size of wine glasses, even without increasing the amount of wine, leads people to drink more." The researchers are not sure what might be causing this type of a behavior in patrons, but they suspect that using larger glasses might alter one's perception of the amount of wine.

This might, in turn, lead them to drink more and order another shot of the drink. Surprisingly, the researchers did not notice the opposite behavior when people switched to smaller glasses from larger ones.

As of now, the researchers are planning to continue their research to confirm the hypothesis.