Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

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Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 3,591 ratings · 680 reviews

This book will literally change the way you think about your next meal. Food psychologist Brian Wansink revolutionizes our awareness of how much, what, and why we’re eating—often without realizing it. His findings will astound you.

• Can the size of your plate really influence your appetite?
• Why do you eat more when you dine with friends?
• What “hidden persuaders” are used...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published December 19th 2006 by Bantam (first published 2006)

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May 17, 2013 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars

I fear of dying from hunger. It’s a very unreasonable fear because what are my chances of dying from hunger? Yet, this is what I must fear because each time my dinner arrives I eyeball it cautiously wondering whether it is enough. All sorts of food sharing events are a particular torture because I'm a slow eater, so the food is usually gone when I'm barely starting to eat. So I stuff my face, I barely chew; because I worry that everybody will walk away full and satisfied and I will be left hungr...more I fear of dying from hunger. It’s a very unreasonable fear because what are my chances of dying from hunger? Yet, this is what I must fear because each time my dinner arrives I eyeball it cautiously wondering whether it is enough. All sorts of food sharing events are a particular torture because I'm a slow eater, so the food is usually gone when I'm barely starting to eat. So I stuff my face, I barely chew; because I worry that everybody will walk away full and satisfied and I will be left hungry.

There is no plausible explanation for this. Yes, I did grow up in communism, but it was Poland, not North Korea, I never had to go to bed without dinner. I didn't have to fight a litter of brothers and sisters at the table, in fact, I only have a younger sister whose favourite food was cauliflower.

Oh, I do truly live in the here and now. I think every meal I eat is at the same time my first and my last one. I pay for it with those extra pounds I so desperately try to run off, jogging at 6am by the canals. I don't turn heads quite the way I used and it saddens me. But it doesn't sadden me nowhere near as much as the thought that I have to eat everything today because there will be no food tomorrow.

Brian Wansink in ‘Mindless Eating’ talks about people like me but also people like you, the normal kind. The kind who thinks they are in control of what and how much they eat it. But you lot, you’re no better than me. If someone gives you free five day old stale popcorn with a movie ticket you will eat that. You will eat that and the box size will be the only criteria of how much food you need. Give you a small plate – that’s your portion. Give you a bigger one – that’s your portion too. Give you your food in a bucket, well, that’s how much you’ll eat. We need to clean our plate. Let's not throw away food! It's a sin. And what about those starving children in Africa? Let's eat more because they can't.

Wansink maintains we make about 200 food-related decisions a day. He is a scientist with good methodology, so let’s believe him. This is a lot of decisions. Who has the time to make 200 right decisions a day? And he proves beyond doubt that even the people who think they know, or even know they know, still don’t know or fully control how much they eat. You think you’re so smart, but some Sade from the speakers in a restaurant will make you order a dessert.

Gosh, are you hungry? You weren't even hungry before but I started talking about food and now you want to eat. You want a brownie and spaghetti, and sushi, pumpkin soup and a burger. I will show you my food and then I will close the door and let the thought of that food slowly burn in your brain. When you finally break and come begging me for that food you will eat almost twice as much as you would have if I weren't such a tease and just gave it to when I first showed you.

If it says low fat it means you can eat all you want. If it says something vaguely healthy on the packaging, again you can eat as much as you want of it and also believe it will cure cancer. That’s your brain on food.

There are so many fantastic facts and experiments in this book, some you can even try at home. Read it so you can learn what a fool you are. Me, I'm fine. As long as I can somehow convince myself there will still be food tomorrow. (less)

16 likes · like · see review

Mar 15, 2010 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Any dieter, or anyone curious about the problem of obesity in general

Shelves: cognition, non-fiction, re-read, food

See an important related article in the New York Times: "In Obesity Epidemic, What’s One Cookie?" (10 March 2010) by Tara Parker-Pope.

Wansink's book combines diet instructions with lessons on the cognitive flaws in the human psyche that make dieting necessary for so many of us.

He runs a "food psychology lab" at Cornell University, where he and his colleagues study how we make out eating decisions and how they can be manipulated. That gives this book a twist, since it is as much a book on human c...more

9 likes · like · see review

Feb 28, 2009 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Trevor by: Richard Wood

Shelves: behavioural-economics, food, evolution, psychology, science

My friend Richard recommended this to me with this review.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....

It seems there are an endless supply of books coming out at the moment about how our judgement can be lead astray and what we can do about it. This one is particularly good. Simple advice on how to lose weight by explaining why we might put it on in the first place.

When I was a child my mother told me not to cheat at patience (Solitaire) because you are only cheating yourself. I had always thought...more

11 likes · like · see review

Apr 22, 2009 Nic rated it 4 of 5 stars

I breezed through this book in just a few hours. Much of its advice is common sense, but the fact it is backed up by actual research studies gives it more weight. The studies conducted are fascinating - especially those conducted on behalf of the Army on how to get stressed out troops in combat environments to eat MORE - and Wansink's voice is fun. Nothing is belabored and he advocates making a few changes to ones habits and looking for longterm results since the body responds to "diets" by stor...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 18, 2011 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very straightforward, entertaining, and informative. I've read a lot of statistics that came from studies, and it's nice to see the studies fleshed out a bit more here.

This book made me hungry! Actually, this book made me hungry while I was reading it, but as soon as I put it down to get a snack, the hunger vanished.

I think that the main messages of controlling portion sizes (e.g. don't eat until you're full, instead eat until you're no longer hungry) and of creating a food environment at home...more

1 like · like · see review

Sep 29, 2007 asteroidbuckle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

Shelves: miscellaneous

I bought this book at a conference after reading just the title. Fully aware that I myself am a mindless eater (most of us are, so don't think you're immune!), I was curious to see what the book had to say about our eating habits.

This book was very interesting and laugh-out-loud funny in parts, too. (Believe me, I got a few odd looks as I was reading this during the conference's keynote address.) The experiements that the author has conducted in his lab and elsewhere to reveal the hidden cues th...more

4 likes · like · see review

Apr 29, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-and-medicine

How do we determine how much we eat? Surely it depends on how hungry we are and how tasty the food is, but Brian Wansink argues that it depends just as much on external cues, like how much is on our plate, the shape of our drinking glasses, how fast other people at the table are eating, and so forth.

The best parts of this book are when he describes his experiments: the famous bottomless soup bowl, for example, or the chicken wing Super Bowl party experiment. (In the former he finds that if your...more

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Dec 27, 2007 Mike Kowalczyk rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: dieters, psychologists

What an interesting book! In short, it examined our (humans') tendencies with respect to eating: what makes us eat, what makes us enjoy food, what causes our eating habits. Through psychological studies, the author demonstrates that almost all of our decisions about food and eating are psychological and even if we believe we control them, we don't. He presents many cases and analyzes many different scenarios, all of which are very interesting.
Aside from this, the overall premise of the book is t...more

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Feb 09, 2009 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food, nonfiction, science

"The best diet is the one you don't know you're on."

Wansink is a Ph.D. who has run food labs at different universities and independently. His book is a friendly, rather chatty account of his findings, which include:

* Your stomach can't count. It doesn't know how many spoonfuls of soup (or whatever) you had, so it will encourage you to keep eating until the plate is clean, the bag or box is empty, or the TV show is over. That's evolution, baby.

* It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach let your...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Tiffany rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book for work. It was one of my goals this year. I am an oncology dietitan by day since my husband seems to think that we need actual food to eat and books just won’t cut it (pah!).

I was amazing! I absolutely loved it. I have presented his information 3 different times to other dietitians and doctors. It is so interesting that I even got my doctors to engage in dialogue with me about it. It is easy enough that anyone can read it and understand it, but it is interesting enough to kee...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Deb rated it 5 of 5 stars

**Food for thought**

Did you know that the size of your plate influences how much you eat more than does your hunger? Or that drinking the same amount of liquid from a tall glass feels more filling than drinking the same amount from a stout glass? Are you aware than pre-portioning your snacks and meals can help you eat less and feel more satisfied? Would you believe that wine served from a bottle with a “New from California” label somehow seems to taste better than the same wine served from a bot...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Michael Hildrum rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is full of fun information and statistics around eating. My favorite examples of this were how our expectations flavor our food so much.

For example, in one study they had participants sample different desserts in the dark (to simulate military personnel eating when lights were no good. "Please rate the strawberry flavour of your Gelatin dessert" And most participants rated the strawberry flavor as "good" or "excellent." However, they were given grape flavored gelatin dessert.*

The oth...more

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Sep 24, 2011 Nenia Campbell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: x-2006s

Many people gain twenty or thirty pounds in a year and are at a loss as to where that mysterious weight gain came from. In his book, Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink describes experiments he runs at his food lab in Cornell, and how various cognitive and physiological process contribute to the overeating epidemic. The biggest surprise? A lot of it is unconscious, leading to food amnesia -- and those phantom pounds.

I've been trying to lose weight myself. It's a plight many people are probably sympat...more Many people gain twenty or thirty pounds in a year and are at a loss as to where that mysterious weight gain came from. In his book, Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink describes experiments he runs at his food lab in Cornell, and how various cognitive and physiological process contribute to the overeating epidemic. The biggest surprise? A lot of it is unconscious, leading to food amnesia -- and those phantom pounds.

I've been trying to lose weight myself. It's a plight many people are probably sympathetic to. I realized I'd gained a lot of weight from eating in the dorms (curse you, freshman fifteen), as well as a lot of other things I hadn't taken into account. Things like snacking from opaque containers (you eat more if you don't see how much you're consuming), or eating while reading, or making junk foods more accessible than healthy foods (apples and carrots all the way). The biggest problem, though, was eating when I wasn't hungry. This book is all about how we unconsciously eat, and about our dependence on external cues to tell us how much and when to eat. A lot of us have forgotten to listen to our bodies to tell us when we're hungry or not -- or we're mistaking a "mouth" hunger (psychological) for a "stomach hunger" (physiological). Over the summer, I lost over ten pounds by altering a couple habits. A lot of my techniques were in this book -- which I'd learned about in a course on social cognition -- but there were a lot more that I had no idea about, and what amazed me was how SIMPLE so many of them were.

-If we are presented with bigger portions, we will eat more. If we eat out of bigger containers, we will eat more. If we serve with bigger silverware, we will eat more. If we are presented with more options, we will also eat more. The reverse is also true. Taking less means eating less.

-If a product says "low fat," or "reduced fat," we will eat more of it, mistakenly assuming that "low fat" is synonymous with low calorie -- it isn't, and oftentimes, the amount of fat that's been reduced is as low as 25% or less. And since you're eating more of it, you're actually consuming more calories.

-It takes about twenty minutes after eating for your brain to send your stomach a signal that you're full. If you eat quickly, that's enough time for a second or third helping, causing you to eat 2x or 3x more than you really need.

-Denying yourself food is a great way to lose weight in the short term but a lot of people quickly gain it back -- and then some. Rather than cutting out everything but ice cubes or sunflower seeds, you might just make it a bit more effortful to eat those sinful snacks or switch to a healthier version that tastes just as good. (Personal example A: I switched from Starbucks to Jamba Juice because a smoothie feels more like a meal than a frappuccino does (which feels like a snack to me). Even though the large sizes are about the same amount of calories for both drinks, the smoothie is more nutritious and I think of it as a meal, so it makes me more full and I'm less likely to eat later. I only go once a week, and I make myself walk across town and back to get one. On the rare instances I do get coffee, I get a latte, not a frappuccino).

-Your body will notice if you eat 2,000 calories one day and only 1,000 the next (and it will NOT be pleased with you), but is virtually oblivious to a difference of 100-300 calories. Cutting out your daily candybar/soda intake or replacing them with ice water and carrots can cause you to lose 10-20 pounds over the course of the year. As an added bonus, drinking your water with ice actually causes your body to burn calories, since your body has to expend energy to heat up that icy cold water (Personal example B: I'm a college student which means that I spend long stretches of time on campus. I found myself getting hungry/thirsty and allowing myself to buy things like coffee or soda. Now, I have a thermos, which I dutifully fill with ice water every morning. I already have a drink which keeps me sated, so I don't have to think about my cravings and ward off the evil temptation of an ice-cold coca-cola. This saves money, too!).

-Children are very sensitive to parental cues. So if you grimace every time you eat a salad but moan explicitly into your triple-chocolate fudge banana sundae, your kid is gonna turn up his nose at arugala in favor of a trip to Baskin Robins. Also, if you're pregnant, what you eat in the third trimester apparently affects your baby's tastes.

I finished this in one afternoon. Wansink's writing style is humorous and engaging, and his experiments on the psychology of food and eating are fascinating. Even if you're not a psychology major or a nutritionist, you'll find him pretty accessible. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to lose weight, or help their family lose weight, or just wants to be more informed.(less)

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Aug 02, 2011 Frank rated it 3 of 5 stars

A great read! There's a mindless margin of ~200 calories a day that you don't notice if you eat 200 calories extra or less. You can use this to your benefit. With some simple changes, you can lose around 30lbs over the course of a year without suffering or feeling like you're on a diet.

Many of the thoughts in the book are quite obvious, but then the author shows you that even though it's obvious, we're all victim to it. For example - plate size. If you use a smaller plate and fill it up, you'll...more

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Oct 08, 2010 Lesli rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, anthropology, psychology, behavioral-economics, 2009

This is not boring, dry, or painful. Dr. Wansink is funny, insightful, and just a little bit scary. Scary because I now look around at everyone wondering if they are carrying a clipboard and writing notes on everything I buy at the supermarket. Then I remember that the studies Dr. Wansink does are based on eating...not buying. Then I start to become suspicious of the drive-thru clerk or the cheerful cashier at the cafeteria.

Apart from my sudden suspicions about why people are staring at me, this...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this one. The topic interests me and the author presented the experiments he completed in an easy to understand manner. A couple experients are as follows: giving theatre attendees free popcorn that is 5 days old,then asking the attendees how much they 'think' they consumed and comparing that to how much they actually consumed to see if they realized how much they are eating.
Another experiment entailed determining if a person will eat less if the bones from their chicken wings are lef...more

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May 17, 2009 Anita rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: from-the-local-library

An interesting trip through a scientist's study on "mindless eating", eating food without really thinking about what we're putting in our body. We've all done it - sat down infront of the TV with a bag of chips to find an hour later that the bag had mysteriously emptied into our bellies, leaving only a greasy bag and queasy stomach behind.

A couple interesting comments that stuck in my head:
- I am the "Nutritional Gatekeeper" to my family's health and happiness.
- The food companies and fast food...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fraudio, lifestyles-deathstyles

Editorial Reviews:

"[Mindless Eating] does more than just chastise those of us guilty of stuffing our faces. It also examines the effectiveness of such popular diets as South Beach or Atkins, and offers useful tips to consciously eat nutritiously."—Boston Herald

"Entertaining... 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."—Publishers Weekly

Product Description:

In this illuminating and ground...more Editorial Reviews:

"[Mindless Eating] does more than just chastise those of us guilty of stuffing our faces. It also examines the effectiveness of such popular diets as South Beach or Atkins, and offers useful tips to consciously eat nutritiously."—Boston Herald

"Entertaining... 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."—Publishers Weekly

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.(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food

This is a pretty good book; however, there were two quirks that a potential reader needs to at least be aware of before reading.

1) This is almost identical to Michal Pollan's In Defense of Food. He even used some of the same exact case studies described in Pollan's book. (e.g. Snacking vs. Meals, French Paradox, Industrialized Food, etc.) I'm not sure which came first, but just be aware the books are similar.

2) Also like the Pollan books, it has as evolutionary bias as well. I know this won't...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

The title of this book immediately caught my attention as I was walking through the library and shifted my thoughts to my seeming inability to not eat just one more pringle, starburst, pretzel, chocolate covered raisin, bread, cheese, and so on and so on...

The book follows a typical non-fiction format: intro, stuff, conclusion. The author's treatment of the material is alternatively wonkish and cheesy and he seems torn about whether or not he's writing a self-helpish diety book or an engaging-br...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Heidi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Brian Wansink has a fascinating job: he runs a food lab (which looks like a restaurant) and studies how people eat. In Mindless Eating, he shares the surprising results of many of his studies.

*A group of people was given what they were told was strawberry yogurt, but they had to eat it in the dark. And then they were actually given _chocolate_ yogurt. Unable to see what they were eating, most of the people in the study found the "strawberry" yogurt to be delicious, but none of them realized the...more

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Aug 06, 2009 Cindy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-want-my-25-year-old-body-back

Not a brilliant writer, but it's bearable and it has a lot of good ideas about how to painlessly cut back on food. Such as:

1. Put only half the food you think you want onto your plate. We generally eat all of whatever is there, but if you put less on it to start with, the chances are pretty good you'll realize you're full and don't need more.

2. Put the food back in the cupboard, refrigerator, etc., rather than leaving it out on the counter. If you don't see it, you're less likely to want more.

Th...more

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Aug 14, 2011 Dana rated it 4 of 5 stars

First of all, the title of this book bothers me. Not the "Mindless Eating" part, but the "Why We Eat More Than We Think" part. It should be stated "Why we eat more than we think we do" or Why we eat more than we think we eat" to be accurate, because as it is stated it could sound like we are thinking less than we are eating and I am pretty sure than unless we are goldfish or paramecium or something, we usually think a lot more than we eat.
My husband said he would never have thought about the ti...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is not a book that will tell you what to eat, but it should be a required companion book to any such book. Brian Wansink presents study after study from his years of psychology research on eating to explain our daily experiences with food -- why we eat food we don't mean to eat and may not even like, how we end up eating more than we think we're eating, and how the cues of our environment can influence when we eat, what we eat, how much we eat, and how much we enjoy what we're eating.

Mindle...more This is not a book that will tell you what to eat, but it should be a required companion book to any such book. Brian Wansink presents study after study from his years of psychology research on eating to explain our daily experiences with food -- why we eat food we don't mean to eat and may not even like, how we end up eating more than we think we're eating, and how the cues of our environment can influence when we eat, what we eat, how much we eat, and how much we enjoy what we're eating.

Mindless Eating is incredibly comprehensive, which means almost anyone should be able to find something applicable. Wansink provides suggestions throughout the book for specific practices we can adopt in order to prevent mindlessly eating too much (in general) or too much of the wrong things. He doesn't lay out what foods we should and shouldn't eat -- there's plenty of information out there telling us to eat more vegetables and fewer sweets -- but he does explain how we may unconsciously sabotage our diets, whether we're trying to eat more healthy foods or fewer calories overall.

One of the most helpful concepts used throughout the book is that of the "mindless" margin -- the 100-calorie margin where we don't feel deprived if we eat fewer calories than normal, but don't feel stuffed if we eat more than usual. This explains how we can slowly gain weight over time without realizing it, but it also provides a "dieting" solution that doesn't require feeling starved or cutting out any foods wholesale. It's not a quick weight-loss solution, but a slow and steady one. And the rest of the book is spent diving into all the various reasons we might eat a few extra calories than we mean to, and how to reverse that to get in the habit of eating a few fewer calories.

If there's one thing that bothered me about this book, it was the utter disregard for the issue of food waste. Tips like "throwing away half your french fries on the way from the counter" might be helpful in trying to lose weight, but it made me cringe as someone very concerned about food waste. However, his tips about the dangers of buying in bulk and how "value" is not always what it seems because of how much food ends up going bad offset these concerns somewhat.

The last chapter spends some time talking about habit-forming and provides concrete solutions to go from mindlessly eating unhealthily to mindfully eating better to, eventually, mindlessly eating in a healthier way. The practical tips here and throughout the book mean that you not only get research spelled out in clear English, but you also get guidance in applying their research findings to your everyday life.(less)

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Oct 27, 2012 David Reber rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: health-mind-body, compulsive-behavior, reference, mental-health, food-studies, behavioral-sciences

How much is the appropriate serving size? One scoop or two? I know that one of my bigger dietary problems has been portion control. Ever since those post-Friday night football game Godfather Pizza parties from my high school days, I have always prided myself in being able to consume large quantities of food. My friends and I challenged each other with shoving entire slices of fully loaded "garbage" pizza into our mouths at a single time. Typical teen-aged boy stuff, right?

Although my dining eti...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I loved this one. I’m not a fan of self-help books or diet books, but give me something where research has been done on how the human brain works and I’m sold. This particular book gives us study after study showing how and why we eat the way we do. I loved seeing all the examples of the author’s theories in action; stale popcorn at the movies, bottomless soup bowls, full dishes of Buffalo wings,

The mindless margin was a particularly helpful bit. Apparently our bodies won’t notice if we eat abo...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Elissa Washuta rated it 2 of 5 stars

I found Wansink's accounts of his research to be totally fascinating. He writes about his experiments carried out at Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab that gave his team insight into how packaging, surroundings, and other cues influence how and how much people eat. While I loved reading about the experiments, I found it unfortunate that this book seemed to pose as a diet book. Wansink gives recommendations for changing eating behaviors based on his research, which I find unnecessary--the f...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gladwell presents a few studies that deal with how we buy or taste things - the soda taste test, how packaging influences purchases, etc - so this seemed like an interesting follow-up. And it is. Wansink's material is equally interesting to read. A number of 'duh' moments, quite a few 'really?' moments, and some interesting clarification on the idea of serving size. My daughter often says she has NO clue who makes up the servings listed on packages - obviously, these are not real people, she'll...more

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Jun 04, 2009 Nimit rated it 3 of 5 stars

An intriguing read overall. Most of the knowledge presented in this book wouldn't be brand new for most of us, though it was insightful to hear it presented in a concrete scientific way. I got some great tips about how to structure my food-surroundings to eat less unhealthy food and the art of food presentation and how it greatly impacts how much we enjoy what we eat.

I gave this book 3 stars, however, because I don't really agree with the basic argument Dr Wansink makes about weight loss. He say...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: self-help

Since I love everything culinary and everything research, this was a fun, fast read. The style is entertaining and the research is fascinating. We humans tend to think that we know it all, or, in the case that we don't, that we know all that's important to know at the time, but Wansink's research shows otherwise.

Most fascinating research is the part on birth order affecting how you eat either a) your favorite food first on a plate (younger siblings) or b) your favorite food last (older siblings)...more

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Reading Herbies: Mindless Eating Week 5 Q1	2	13	Apr 30, 2012 09:56am
Reading Herbies: Mindless Eating Week 5 Q2	2	10	Apr 29, 2012 09:25am
Reading Herbies: Mindless Eating Week 4 Q1	2	24	Apr 22, 2012 10:36am
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Reading Herbies: Week 1 Q1	4	15	Apr 17, 2012 03:27am
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Reading Herbies: Mindless Eating Week 3 Q2	1	10	Apr 15, 2012 07:19am

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About Brian Wansink

Brian Wansink is an American professor in the fields of consumer behavior and nutritional science and is currently serving as the Executive Director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP), which is charged with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and with promoting the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid).

Wansink is best known for his work on consumer behavior and food and for popularizi...more

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Books by Brian Wansink

Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity

Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Home, School, Grocery Stores, Restaurants, and More

Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design -- For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires

Is Food Marketing Making Us Fat?: A Multi-Disciplinary Review

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“The best diet is the one you don't know you're on.” — 8 people liked it

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Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

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