Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

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About Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

Product Description In this illuminating and groundbreaking new book, food psychologist Brian Wansink shows why you may not realize how much you’re eating, what you’re eating–or why you’re even eating at all. • Does food with a brand name really taste better? • Do you hate brussels sprouts because your mother did? • Does the size of your plate determine how hungry you feel? • How much would you eat if your soup bowl secretly refilled itself? • What does your favorite comfort food really say about you? • Why do you overeat so much at healthy restaurants? Brian Wansink is a Stanford Ph.D. and the director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab. He’s spent a lifetime studying what we don’t notice: the hidden cues that determine how much and why people eat. Using ingenious, fun, and sometimes downright fiendishly clever experiments like the “bottomless soup bowl,” Wansink takes us on a fascinating tour of the secret dynamics behind our dietary habits. How does packaging influence how much we eat? Which movies make us eat faster? How does music or the color of the room influence how much we eat? How can we recognize the “hidden persuaders” used by restaurants and supermarkets to get us to mindlessly eat? What are the real reasons most diets are doomed to fail? And how can we use the “mindless margin” to lose–instead of gain–ten to twenty pounds in the coming year? Mindless Eating will change the way you look at food, and it will give you the facts you need to easily make smarter, healthier, more mindful and enjoyable choices at the dinner table, in the supermarket, in restaurants, at the office–even at a vending machine–wherever you decide to satisfy your appetite. From the Hardcover edition. From Publishers Weekly According to Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, the mind makes food-related decisions, more than 200 a day, and many of them without pause for actual thought. This peppy, somewhat pop-psych book argues that we don't have to change what we eat as much as how, and that by making more mindful food-related decisions we can start to eat and live better. The author's approach isn't so much a diet book as a how-to on better facilitating the interaction between the feed-me messages of our stomachs and the controls in our heads. In their particulars, the research summaries are entertaining, like an experiment that measured how people ate when their plates were literally "bottomless," but the cumulative message and even the approach feels familiar and not especially fresh. Wansink examines popular diets like the South Beach and Atkins regimes, and offers a number of his own strategies to help focus on what you eat: at a dinner party, "try to be the last person to start eating." Whether readers take time to weigh their decisions and their fruits and vegetables remains to be seen. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From AudioFile The two points in this exciting audio are that nearly undetectable differences in daily calories make a big weight difference over time and that many factors influence how much we want to eat in particular settings. Our ancient brains won't limit calories automatically--to inhibit overeating, we have to set up cues, such as the appearance of food or the shape of a plate or package. These cues work better than depending on unreliable feelings, such as a full stomach or tight clothes. Though this might sound tedious or mechanical, the author's excitement will inspire interest and confidence in spite of his less-than-ideal voice quality. Citing many fascinating studies, he offers great strategies for overcoming various patterns of overeating. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One The Mindless Margin Did you ever eat the last piece of crusty, dried-out chocolate cake even though it