One of my current fascinations is the book “Mindless Eating” by Dr. Brian Wansink, professor of consumer behavior at Cornell U.
I think the title is a bit misleading. It mislead me. I thought it was about pigging-out but it is actually about the psychology of eating, especially what makes us decide how much to eat. His whole point is that your mind, senses and training will affect what you eat, mindful or not. You can work about these factors but it takes deliberate effort beforehand, not self-control at the time.
Wansink gave a paper to the National Academy of Science and a critic huffed that the science would only apply to uneducated people who didn’t know the science. [I recommend that you always take such statements warily. I have seen some surprising information about probability experts solving probability puzzles poorly outside their office, where they forgot to employ their knowledge.]
Wansink was challenged and says the following:
“We’ll take 63 sharp, competitive graduate students at a top research university.
“We’ll devote a full 90-minute class session just before Christmas vacation to talking about the size bias. We’ll lecture to them, show them videos, have them go through a demonstration, and even break them into small groups to discuss how people could prevent themselves from “being tricked” by bigger serving bowls. We’ll use just about every educational method short of doing an interpretive dance. At the end of the 90 minutes, they will be sick of the topic, sick of the professor, and sick of school. Why? Because this is obvious and because they’re intelligent and informed.
“Six weeks later, we’ll see what they remember. In late January, we invited these students to a Super Bowl party at a sports bar, and 40 accepted. When they arrived, they were led to one of two rooms to get their snacks for the game. Those who were led to the first room found a table with two huge gallon bowls of Chex Mix. They were given a plate and asked to take as much as they wanted. As they got to the end of the line, we asked them to fill out a brief survey about Super Bowl commercials.
“There was only one empty corner of the table where they could put their plate while filling out the survey. What they didn’t know was that there was a scale under the tablecloth and that the amount they had served themselves was being weighed and recorded.
“In the second room, everything was the same except that the Chex Mix had been put out in four half-gallon bowls.
“What did our size-bias experts do? The students who served themselves from the gallon bowls took 53 percent more Chex Mix than those serving themselves from half-gallon bowls. An hour later we cleared away their plates, which had identification codes on the bottom. Not only did those who served themselves from the large bowls take 53 percent more, they also ate more (59 percent more).
“No one is immune to serving-size norms—not even “intelligent, informed” people who have been lectured on the subject ad nauseam. In the end, setting the table with the wrong dinner plates or serving bowls—the big ones—sets the stage for overeating.”
The book is brimming with amazing results. I highly recommend it in print or Kindle format.
