Guest post: Book review: Mindless Eating

My friend Rachel was really jazzed about a book she listened to (on CD). CBS has promoted this book as a “Freakonomics of Food” and  ABC’s 20/20 ran a segment in 2007 on the book and its premise. I asked Rachel to write a guest post about the book, to which she graciously agreed. Following are her reflections.

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Recently, I enjoyed listening on CD the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink.  Originally a native of Correctionville, IA, Wansink’s Iowa connections appealed to me in addition to the book’s topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed his humor and also how he combines health, psychology, and consumer behavior. Wansink shares results from a number of experiments that he and his team of graduate students had completed, centered around why we eat the foods we do.

Wansink’s chicken wing example is fresh in my mind.  He and his students hosted a super bowl party for a number of college students.  During the party, the students were offered unlimited chicken wings.  In half the restaurant, the wait staff was told to clear the empty baskets of chicken wings.  In the other half of the restaurant the wait staff was told to leave the empty baskets of chicken wing bones on the tables.  They discovered that if the wait staff removed the visual cue (the empty chicken wing basket), the students consistently ate more chicken wings than the students for whom the baskets were not cleared. Students with no baskets before them did not realize how many chicken wings they actually ate, (the empty baskets had been removed and they no longer could see the remains of what they had gobbled up!) whereas students who visually saw the baskets of bones pile up conscienciously limited their consumption.

Later after listening to the analysis of this study, I went to a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed baskets of chips and salsa—and lo and behold the wait staff removed the baskets when they were empty, replacing them with full baskets and fresh salsa.  Hmmm….how many chips had I eaten, or for that matter how many baskets had I eaten? 

Throughout this book, you often find yourself in these Ah Ha moments, where you realize that you have been eating mindlessly.

Check out Mindless Eating at http://mindlesseating.org/ for more insightful information.