Book Review: Mindless Eating

I just finished reading Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating (2010) for the second time.  Wansink is a food and consumer psychologist who seeks to understand why people eat the way that the do. In particular, he seems to be particularly interested in environmental variables. 

On the opening page are just these words, "The best diet is the one you don't know you are on." Wansink the proceeds to lay out small environmental changes that you can make that will affect how much you eat. 

Although there are numerous interesting studies described in this book, one of my favorites has to do with the size and shape of our dishes. People will eat more off of larger plates, even if they are told that they will.  People also drink less out of tall skinny glasses, even when they are told that they will. 

His concluding chapter deals with how to adjust our eating in small ways to lose slowly. He talks about the benefit of "food trade offs."  For example, "I can have chips if I don't have a morning snack." He talks about the benefit of making 3, but not more, small changes at a time because they will be barely noticeable.

In many ways, this is different from a lot of diet books. It will help you to look at eating in different ways, many of which you have not considered.  It is probably my favorite food-related book.