Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think By Brian Wansink

Mindless Eating: Why we Eat More Than We Think was written by nutritional scientist, Brian Wansink. As a nutritional scientist, Professor Wansink studied the psychology behind why people actually eat and what influences over eating. He has spent the entirety of his career studying and trying to comprehend the “hidden cues” that determine what, why, and how humans eat, his study is targeted toward the American population. In the beginning of the book Wansink takes the time to explain that this is not a diet book because “diet books focus on what dieticians and health practitioners know”, while his book focuses on what “psychologist and marketers know”. Although they are both backed by science and research one is much more simple for the average …show more content…
This statement is not saying that some people eat more with larger portions, it is saying that everyone eats more when given larger portions. This fact was proven by Wansink in a few experiments that he described in depth throughout his book. Many people do not believe that they are affected by the larger portions of food at all though, they have even said this to Wansink after he had performed the said experiments on them. One of the experiments conducted included giving a large group of people a bucket of stale popcorn. The participants believed that they were just a lucky few who were getting to watch a free movie with a free tub of popcorn, harmless right? Not exactly. One set of the group was given a medium tub of popcorn while the others were given a large tub. The point of this experiment was to see how much, if any at all, popcorn was consumed by the movie goers. Now most people would not eat stale, 5 day old, popcorn, even if it was free, right? wrong! Although the popcorn was stale and was even said to squeak when being eaten, the people who ate the large tub of popcorn ate almost 53 percent more than those with the medium tub. They ran this same exact experiment numerous times and where left with the same exact results each time. I found this experiment to be very relatable and accurate, I feel like everyone has had a time in their life where they eat much more than necessary just because the food is there. The prime …show more content…
The way that this experiment worked is that there was a group of people who were brought into a restaurant for dinner. They disguised the same exact wine bottle which in reality was known by the name Two Buck wine by Charles Shaw. Half of the diners were given the disguised bottle that was relabeled with a label that sated that the bottle Noah’s Winery and “NEW from California”. The other half of the diners were given the Noah’s Winery bottle but instead this one said “NEW from North Dakota”. Already, you should see where they were playing at with this experiment. After everyone was done eating and Professor Wansink was able to measure the amount of food and wine left behind by both sets of people he realized that people who were given the “North Dakota Wine” believed that it was actually from North Dakota. Because North Dakota is not known for wine the people who consumed the wine had already set very low expectations for it before even consuming the wine, “they rated the wine as tasting bad and their food as less tasty”, measurements showed that they actually ate less also. Compare this to the people who believed to have received their wine from California. California is known for having amazing wines so the people who received this wine had already