Those tiny 100-calorie snack packs won’t stop you from overeating, according to Brown University researchers. They found that people ate the same amount of cookies or chips, regardless of whether they came in a large, multiserving bag or single-serving packs.

“The biggest influence on junk-food intake appeared to be the amount people kept in their house,” says study author Hollie Raynor, Ph.D. So clean out your pantry, but don’t give up on 100 calorie snacks just yet.

If you’re familiar with poker, you’ve probably heard the saying that goes like this, “you can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle.” Similarly, it’s harder to eat more than 100 calories if you don’t buy a huge bag of corn chips.

Even if you buy 10 bags of 100 calorie snacks, it seems unlikely that you’ll eat them all in one seating. Even if the bags are small, it takes an effort to carry that many bags with you and open every single one of them. But if you buy a regular bag of snacks, it is just one bag, you open it once and you’ll probably eat it until it is empty.

So it seems that 100 calorie snacks can prevent excessive snacking on junk-food; to make 100 calorie snacks work for you, just don’t buy regular size snacks and you’ll do just fine. [via Men’s Health]