How does an environment affect people’s behaviour? Is there more that designers can do besides ergonomic layouts, well planned storage and provision of cheerful décor? Can the way a space is created encourage healthy eating habits and ways of being?

The answer is yes, in more ways than you might think. It’s possible to design a kitchen that not only supports but encourages healthy eating, in a subtle but effective manner. At the same time, this approach also creates a healthy kitchen that doubles as a wonderful place to spend time.

Here are a few specific ideas to consider, much of it inspired by Michael Pollen’s recent book, In Defence of Food:

• The role of the table as the centre of healthy food habits is far more important than it might appear at first glance. Conversation plays a major role in slowing down eating, adding to the “food experience per bite”. Eating food slowly is effective at reducing over-consumption. According to various studies, it takes the brain 20 minutes to catch up with the stomach. Delaying the intake of food with conversation and pauses, such as serving a new course, allows the body the has time to give you a signal of fullness. In addition, it helps us to go for quality foods, rather than quantity. In turn, this creates greater interest in the food itself and greater enthusiasm for taking the time and trouble to prepare it.
• A well-positioned, handsome table with an atmosphere of enjoyable sociability, set in sunlight or candlelight, can also make a big difference. With a belief that getting together is worth it – much better than eating alone with nothing but the TV for company – then you can give round one to the ‘designed’ environment. It’s no accident that the breakfast nook is a common request from our clients. It’s a protected and cosy spot for consuming civilised meals.
• A full meal, eaten regularly, reduces snacking. The formality of being at a table, consideration for others and sociability of manners, turns the meal into a shared experience. The French serve modest portions, controlling plating size, which in turn sends the right visual cues. This is because most people have a ‘unit bias,’ according to psychologist Paul Rozin. He explains that they take their cues from what is on the plate, not what they necessarily want to eat.

Stay tuned for installments 2 and 3 for more tips on “Cooking & Furniture” and more!

My aunt was British cookery writer Elizabeth David, who was known to the family as ‘Liza’. Between the ages of 15 and 30, I often dined with her, perhaps every eight weeks. We met up mostly for lunch. It was a lengthy affair, lasting up to five hours – there was no rush because she began her writing at 5 am and had finished by 10 am (few writers it seems can do more than this). The time with her was pleasurable, daunting and always full of surprises.

I always looked forward to the conversation and mood of these lunchtime excursions into the world of eating. When you arrived, she had usually prepared one course, which was already in the oven. Over the next hour or so you would be invited to participate in preparing second courses, salads, hors d’oeuvres or desserts, all the while sitting at her rudimentary pine table. There was no work surface.

If you were lucky, she was in the middle of one of her research programmes, although ‘research’ might convey the wrong impression. She nurtured ‘enthusiasms’ that became scholarly and gustatory quests. I once ate lunch with her when she was writing her English Spices and Aromatic Herbs book. We ate spiced beef terrine. On another occasion, whilst she was working on English Bread and Yeast Cookery, we dined on delicious Ligurian pizzas & Selkirk Bannocks.

But it was her ice cream experiments for her Ice Book, posthumously published, that gave our long meals perfect ending.  Sweet, scented, aromatic, rich or delicate and scooped from the ice cream maker whilst still soft and non-crystalline - I can almost feel it in my mouth now.

Occasionally things went wrong - or at least not right - for her. She would always be the first to say so. She never boasted about her cooking, always analysing it thoughtfully, eating small quantities and encouraging me or other guests (I rarely remember more than one other – she liked intimate conversation) to eat as much as possible.

Generosity - making guests feel the food was there to be eaten to the point of satisfaction - was important. There was always a glass of carefully selected but not expensive wine at hand and one of my jobs was to use the corkscrew. She used to buy half bottles so that we could switch wines when appropriate. She never expected you to finish the glass once the courses had moved on.

There was one major drawback to eating with her. As she lived on her own and lived in relatively modest circumstances, she had no one to do the washing up. The guest (at least me) was expected to do the bulk of it. Fairly early on, when I was 17, what one could describe as a sink cabinet finally fell apart. When leaks began appearing in the drainers, and the cupboard doors started falling off, she suggested that I should build her a new sink cabinet, this time at the right height and properly constructed. I duly obliged, constructing it in the street to the bemusement of local Chelsea residents. I was paid in meals – mostly lunches and £300 to embark on student travel. Looking back, it was no accident that I became a kitchen designer.

See ‘You can smell the sea or touch the olive branch…’, a 2006 article by Tom Norrington-Davies , in the Telegraph.

Pace, pleasure, provenance. Three words that sum up the Slow Food movement, which currently attracts 80,000 people and food producers worldwide. The manifesto, written by founder Folco Portinari in 1989, offers much sage advice that can be applied to how we live in and use our kitchens.

The insidiousness of doing everything in a hurry particularly diminishes the pleasure of cooking. Designing a kitchen to ensure you expend care while prepping and cooking is one of our studio’s key philosophies and easily applied to all kitchen design. We describe this as creating a sense of order by using ‘dedicated work surfaces’. We limit the length of surface to single tasks with connected storage for tools and height of counters, sequencing activities to a different piece of furniture or location where there is logical flow or body movement. This leaves space on the fringes of the culinary zone for French doors into the garden, a friendly piece of furniture, perhaps an antique dresser, a bigger table, rocking chair or a fireplace.

We encourage pre-meal activities as a sociable process so that you can chat with others whilst you cook, look out the window, listen to music or simply pause for a moment without a cupboard or wall three inches from your nose. We therefore locate cooking and prepping facing into the room so that eye contact is possible, ensuring that ‘suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from (those) who mistake frenzy for efficiency’ quoting from the Slow Food manifesto.

The pleasure of eating is enhanced by the expectations and beauty of the food when arranged and laid out before eating. We provide a raised food bar or servery, narrow and long, that is easily accessible to the cook and the prospective diners. It can also serve as a buffet point for self-assembly meals with small bowls of different preparations or performs as a leaning post for visitors to chat holding a glass of wine, with the option of perching below on a high stool.

Provenance so important to food, applies equally to physical things. Knowing where your furniture is made, being able to see it constructed, using eco-sourced materials, good craftspeople and in preferably smaller, well-managed workshops, applies the Slow Food principles to the making of things.

You need someone to bring all this together and ensure the kitchen space creates well-being and this is where the ethical designer steps in. Its where design can work its magic in tune with the new mood of the times, inspired so appropriately by the Slow Food movement.