Book review: "Mindless Eating" by Dr. Brian Wansink
This is an interesting book. The author takes a close look at why we eat the way we do. For example, when do you stop eating? Do you eat all the food on your plate, or do you keep asking yourself if you are full yet? If you tend to clean your plate, what would happen if it never emptied? Or better yet (and easier to implement) a never-ending bowl of soup? He rigged up a big pot of soup with a tube running under a table up into a bowl. It was situated such that the bowl of soup would always have about the same amount in it. Most people ate more than they normally would because the cue of the empty bowl was no longer there.
He found that people make around 200 food decisions each day and he discusses many of the cues that affect our eating: Do you eat fewer M&Ms if there are fewer colors in the bowl (less variety)? Typically, yes. Do people eat more off bigger plates than off smaller plates? Again, usually yes. Do people eat more snacks during happy movies or gloomy movies? Read the book for the answer to this question and to several other interesting questions.
It's part diet book, part psychology, and part marketing. He gives tips so you can cut down on extra eating when you normally don't think about it. Companies in the food industry also use these findings. You can use these "tricks" to eat more healthy food and cut down on the unhealthy food and the amount of food you eat, but in a way that you won't notice it.
Most diets limit what you can eat, but you still get cravings for those items. Cutting back a little bit on each meal, making snacks less convenient (not sitting in a bowl within reach on your desk), and not eating chips directly from the bag, will slowly remove calories from your daily diet. It won't be a drastic change, but over time you will lose weight and you won't suffer.
He reports the results of several studies his group and others have performed. Some studies don't quite go the way they expect, and he is upfront and honest about that, too.
The book is light-hearted and easy to read. If you are interested in becoming more mindful about food and your eating habits, give this book a read.
-- C.
He found that people make around 200 food decisions each day and he discusses many of the cues that affect our eating: Do you eat fewer M&Ms if there are fewer colors in the bowl (less variety)? Typically, yes. Do people eat more off bigger plates than off smaller plates? Again, usually yes. Do people eat more snacks during happy movies or gloomy movies? Read the book for the answer to this question and to several other interesting questions.
It's part diet book, part psychology, and part marketing. He gives tips so you can cut down on extra eating when you normally don't think about it. Companies in the food industry also use these findings. You can use these "tricks" to eat more healthy food and cut down on the unhealthy food and the amount of food you eat, but in a way that you won't notice it.
Most diets limit what you can eat, but you still get cravings for those items. Cutting back a little bit on each meal, making snacks less convenient (not sitting in a bowl within reach on your desk), and not eating chips directly from the bag, will slowly remove calories from your daily diet. It won't be a drastic change, but over time you will lose weight and you won't suffer.
He reports the results of several studies his group and others have performed. Some studies don't quite go the way they expect, and he is upfront and honest about that, too.
The book is light-hearted and easy to read. If you are interested in becoming more mindful about food and your eating habits, give this book a read.
-- C.
posted by Cerpicio at 9:05 AM
1 Comments:
Yeah, on the flip-side of that coin, when I was little, I used to sit at the bar in our basement in Michigan wearing my duel-rig colt .45 cap guns on my gunbelt and knock it back like I was drinking whiskey. I couldn't find a cowboy hat, so if anyone asked, I'd tell them cowboy hats were for p***ies, spoken from the corner of my mouth. Okay, I didn't really use that word, but you get the idea. ANYWAY, back to the point, it was fun and I drank more Coke like that than I would have if someone gave me a can. Probably one of the exceptions. The other exception is that ALL research is out the window after you smoke dope and have the munchies.
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