Is your kitchen making you fat? Choice of crockery, fridge and even paint could be helping to pile on the pounds(2)
Unearth cocktail or port glasses for your wine and keep the giant glasses for water.
Then there's the growing trend for super-size American fridges. 'A huge fridge often means a huge body. When you have a giant fridge, you'll keep lots of food in it,' says Vicki Edgson, a nutritional therapist and eating coach.
'A smaller fridge encourages you to buy food more frequently, ensuring it's fresh.'
Another trend for the luxury modern kitchen is to fit a self-contained pantry to store bulk food purchases.
Keep it off: Having a television in the kitchen means we're likely to spend more time snacking in the kitchen
The idea is to cut down on food bills, but the reality, according to U.S. psychologist Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating, is that 50 per cent of the snack food bought in bulk is eaten within six days of purchase.
Other research found that people prepared 23 per cent more food when cooking from large containers and ate twice as many sweets from big bags as from smaller ones — because there's no natural stopping point.
So, far from saving you money, that pantry could be very expensive, indeed, in terms of calories as well as cash.
That stylish central island, too, may be a problem. If you're using it to serve up buffet-style family meals, then beware: when you're faced with heaped bowls of food, it's much harder to keep track of your portions.
In one study, people guessed they had one or two servings during a family-style dinner when they served themselves. In fact, many of them had taken up to four servings.
It may be less sociable, but it's certainly better for the waistline to plate up one serving at the stove and take it out of the kitchen to a dining room to eat.
And then there's open shelving, so often a feature of stylish modern kitchens, such as Samantha Cameron's in Downing Street.
It's fine to use them for saucepans or china, but if you're using your shelves to display glass jars of pasta, dried fruit, sweets or biscuits, you could unwittingly be stimulating your appetite.
'Greed starts from the moment you smell or see food,' says Vicki Edgson.
'It really is a case of out of sight, out of mind. When I visit my clients' homes, the first thing I do is declutter their kitchens and put all the food away into cupboards.'
The only exception is the fruit bowl, which is left on display to encourage greater consumption of fruit and veg.
Lighting is a complicated issue. If your kitchen's too bright, that can cause stress levels to rise, stimulating your appetite and making you eat quickly (there's a reason why fast food joints are always dazzlingly lit).
But if it's dim, food looks more attractive and you're more likely to binge. The solution is to keep the room bright while you're cooking, then dim the lights when you sit down to eat.
Finally, it seems that even the colour you choose for your walls can have an impact. Neutrals are fashionable, but make sure you go for cool, silvery shades rather than warm yellows, which research shows can tempt you to eat up to 33 per cent more.
While a beautifully designed multi-functional modern kitchen-cum-entertainment centre will undoubtedly add pounds to the value of your home, it seems it can do the same to your waistline.
Keeping your kitchen scruffy may be the smarter choice in the long run.
