Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

I recently finished a fantastic book about the psychology of eating that was a treasure trove of advice for my thesis development, as I embark on a project that seeks to inform and change behavior about food consumption. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. embraces a way of thinking about food that aims to help people be aware the influences that can cause overeating, and inspires decision making that involves re-engineering of one’s surroundings to allow for eating without guilt and without gaining weight.

This book is filled with amazing stories that have helped me form my thesis ideation and brainstorm more ways to influence behavior change in the families with small children. I’ve categorized some of the most pertinant quotes below (bolds added by me for emphasis).

Mindless Eating includes research studies that show the following ways in which we can mindlessly overeat:

• Watch the containers! People eat more when you give them a bigger container. Period. We all consume more from big packages, whatever the product.
  
• One for $1, Two for $1.99! almost any sign with a number promotion leads us to buy 30 to 100 percent more than we normally would.
• Speed Eating. Many research studies show that it takes up to 20 minutes for our body and brain to signal satiation, so that we realize we are full. Twenty minutes is enough time to inhale two or three more pieces of pizza and chug a large refill of Pepsi
• Pay Attention! Distractions of all kinds make us eat, forget how much we eat, and extend how long we eat—even when we’re not hungry. And, the heavier a person was—the more they relied on external cues to tell them when to stop eating and the less they relied on whether they felt full
• Avoid the Buffet. Increasing the variety of a food increases how much everyone eats.
• Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Even though we haven’t touched the chocolate, our pancreas may begin to secrete insulin, a chemical used to metabolize the upcoming sugar rush we’re planning. This insulin lowers our blood sugar level, which makes us feel hungry. While drooling has never hurt anyone, the more actively you salivate, the more likely you are to be impulsive and to overeat
  

Ways to influence positive behavior change without huge sacrifices:

• Think 20 percent less. Dish out 20 percent less than you think you might want before you start to eat. You probably won’t miss it. In most of our studies, people can eat 20 percent less without noticing it. If they eat 30 percent less they realize it, but 20 percent is still under the radar screen. • For fruits and vegetables, think 20 percent more. If you cut down how much pasta you dish out by 20 percent, increase the veggies by 20 percent. Even 10 percent decrease in our daily calorie consumption would either slow or reverse the weight gain among most of us.
• See what you are eating, Pre-plate! Our stomach can’t count and we don’t remember. Unless we can actually see what we’re eating, we can very easily overeat.
• Visuals over Numbers. While it’s hard to calculate calories, it’s easy to eyeball a portion size. Also, volume trumps calories. We eat the volume we want, not the calories we want.
• Choose your dishes wisely. people given a short, wide glass poured an average of 19 percent more juice or soft drink than those given the tall, thin glass. Read more at location. Even if you intended to limit your portion size, a larger plate would likely influence you to serve more.
• Make the see-food diet work for you. Make healthy foods easy to see, and less healthy foods hard to see
• H2OhYeah! If you drink the recommended eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day, and if you fill those 64 ounces with ice, you’ll burn an extra 70 calories a day.
• 28 Days to Success. Experts in behavioral modification say it takes about 28 days—one month—to break an old habit and replace it with a good one
  

Tips for the “Nutrition Gatekeeper”, who controls around 72 percent of what her family eats:

• Children eat what tastes good and what’s convenient and what portion size they see as appropriate. You can use this to help create positive lifetime food patterns.
• If you struggle with your own food heritage, here is where you get your second chance—as a nutritional gatekeeper.
• One key take-away for us “not so great cooks” is the good we can do just by adding more variety to our meals. How? By 1) buying different foods, 2) trying new recipes (including ethnic ones), 3) substituting different ingredients (mainly vegetables and spices) into favorite recipes, 4) taking kids to the grocery store and letting them choose a new, healthy food, or 5) visiting authentic ethnic restaurants.
• It is not only our tastes that our children can inherit. It also can be our attitudes about food and eating.
• Use the Half-Plate Rule. For lunch and dinner, half the plate should be vegetables and fruits and the other half should be protein and starch
• Be a good marketer. Foods should be neither a punishment nor a reward. Healthy foods can, however, be fresh, crunchy, refreshing, and make you strong, smart…Be convincing.
• Offer variety. Some of our early findings suggest that the more foods you expose your child to, the more nutritionally well-rounded he or she will become. Trying new recipes, new ingredients, ethnic foods, and different types of restaurants will all help mix it up and break the junk-food habit.

Everything I am reading points to a big picture goal that I want to be sure to maintain throughout my project development. Food is delicious, a great pleasure in addition to the source of our energy and sustinance. We need to shift our environments to work with our lifestyle instead of against it.