Mindless Eating
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?
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What Hacker News says
- Mostly all about life, not technology, but all the books below have science behind them and many references and studies. I have read every one of these books, some multiple times. These are the books I would make required reading if I gave a class on life, they cover sleep, nutrition, exercise, brain health (depression/happiness), memorization and learning.
* Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
* Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
* Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (evidence based, ~1,000 references)
* The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep (sleep debt)
* Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
* Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
* Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
- "Your theory that losing slower would be more sustainable than losing faster is interesting, but do you have any actual evidence for it?"
I think losing weight quickly for a short period of time (4-6 weeks) works very well (e.g. V-Diet). I also think losing weight slowly over the long term (max 1 pound per month) also works well.
I think most people try somewhere in the middle of the two extremes and it just doesn't work. Trying to lose weight quickly for an extended period just doesn't work for all but the most motivated people.
For evidence in support of losing weight slowly and almost effortlessly take a look at the book Mindless Eating. It covers a lot of interesting research.
- Same here. Lost ~44 pounds without exercising. I just take a 10-15 minute walk 3-4 times a week and removed most of the processed foods from the diet, no meat, no eggs, very low sugar, became a vegetarian. So most of the impact came from changing my diet and not merely from exercising.
Good books on diet:
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
What To Eat, Marion Nestle
Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, Walter Willett
Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink
Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes
- EDIT: see caveat from K-Wall below. Can't trust anything these days :-/ </edit>
That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in Nudge or in Mindless Eating.
[1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
[2] http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls...
- Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink
