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Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

by Brian Wansink

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Review:

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Wansink's dual approach emphasizing food knowledge and self-knowledge offers a sensible route to permanent weight loss." Booklist

Review:

"[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

About the Author

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., is an Iowa native and earned his doctorate at Stanford University. He is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Nutritional Science at Cornell University, where he is Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. The author of three profesional books on food and consumer behavior, he lives with his family in Ithaca, New York, where he enjoys both French food and French fries each week.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
Pamela Ager, November 7, 2008 (view all comments by Pamela Ager)
I read this almost a year ago, and it changed my eating habits. Not really a "diet" book, it's profoundly effective because it's our eating habits that put on weight and keep it on. For the first time in a long time I'm at an optimal weight for me, and although sometimes I don't eat that bowl of ice cream or 20 chicken wings when I want to, it's not that hard after changing some basic habits. It may be true that Americans are the only people on the planet who want to eat to lose weight, but even so, this book will help you if you seriously want to keep the lid on your weight gain. Or like me, you may find yourself eating differently just from reading this book!
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(3 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
Edward, February 23, 2008 (view all comments by Edward)
All hail Charles Shaw!
Long live the 2 Buck Chuck!
Can wine from North Dakota and California really taste that differently?
Does that stick of sugarless gum that you chew everyday equal 1 pound per year?
Do you want to know what I am talking about?
Read this marvelous book!
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(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
diver10, December 3, 2007 (view all comments by diver10)
What a fascinating, entertaining, yet educational book. I flew through the pages. It doesn't come across as a diet book, and I don't think it's meant to be one. However, after reading a chaper or two, I would catch myself eating mindlessly as described in the book. (Eating chips out of a big bag rather than pouring out a serving does make a difference!). The experiments described made me wish I had gone into food marketing researching...
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(6 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780553384482
Subtitle:
Why We Eat More Than We Think
Author:
Wansink, Brian
Author:
Wansink, Brian Phd
Publisher:
Bantam
Subject:
Nutrition
Publication Date:
August 2007
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
292
Dimensions:
8.20x6.06x.66 in. .57 lbs.

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