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So did you really eat a healthy portion of food today, or was that just a delusion? According to a new research, people can be tricked into eating more, by just labeling their food "small," even if the portion, in reality is big.

For the study, the researchers gave participants, cookies of the same size, labeled "medium" and "large" to consume as many as they wished.

It was found that participants ate much more of the cookies labeled "medium" when compared to the cookies labeled "large." Both the cookies were indeed of the same size and what participants displayed during the experiment was an act of pure self-delusion.

The researchers who conducted the study believe that people are so easily tricked because they trust the labels and do not really bother about what and how much they are eating, reported Mail Online.

Study author Aradhna Krishna of the University of Michigan says that the findings of the study are significant since this theory can be easily applied to clothing and drinks as well.

Krishna, a marketing professor said that fizzy drinks vary in size from restaurant to restaurant but that if you always choose a 'medium' drink, you could still be getting more than you wanted.

"Just because there's a different size label attached to the same actual quantity of food, people eat more. But also, think they've not eaten as much," she said.

She noted that in the last six decades, the size "large" has grown up to six times of what its original size used to be, which is a contributing factor to the epidemic- obesity.

She said that uniform sizing would help reduce the problem of obesity, although she does not want "restrictions on freedom," Mail Online reported.

"All I'm saying is that sizes should be made more uniform, and that will only help the consumer because you'll know what you're getting," she said.

Marketers of clothing have used this trick for years by making 'vanity sizing.' By doing this, they make customers believe that they are thinner than they actually are.

For example, a size 14 dress can be simply replaced by a label 12 to fool women into believing they have been on a diet.

The findings of this research could prove useful for manipulating the portion size of food. There are studies which have shown that eating from a small plate could make people overestimate the amount of food taken in by them hence, making them eat less.