Mindless Eating

Why We Eat More Than We Think

By: Brian Wansink Ph.D.

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

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? And how can we use the “mindless margin” to lose - instead of gain - 10 to 20 pounds in the coming year?

Mindless Eating will change the way you look at food, and it will give you the facts you need to easily make smarter, healthier, more mindful and enjoyable choices at the dinner table, in the supermarket, in restaurants, at the office - even at a vending machine - wherever you decide to satisfy your appetite.

©2006 Brian Wansink (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Entertaining...Isn't so much a diet book as a how-to on better facilitating the interaction between the feed-me messages of our stomachs and the controls in our heads." (Publishers Weekly)

“[Mindless Eating] does more than just chastise those of us guilty of stuffing our faces. It also examines the effectiveness of such popular diets as South Beach or Atkins, and offers useful tips to consciously eat nutritiously.” (Boston Herald)

Socially Engineered To Eat!

The concept that stayed with me from the first time I read this book back in 2011 was that: 100 calories per day = 10 pounds per year. To this day that lingers when I am tempted to have a snack but I’m not that hungry, or when I’m looking for some motivation to take one more walk around the block.

I decided to pick the book up again to see if any other helpful tid-bits would implant themselves in my mind, and I came away with a reminder to always be aware of JUST HOW MUCH we are being Socially Engineered to eat crap-food… and way too much of it!

I didn’t find this book as interesting as I did when I first read it, but it’s not because the subject matter is boring – it’s just that I think in general we are all increasingly aware the of the Food Industry’s constant (and sometimes insidious) manipulations of our relationship to food as well as our own personal motivators and so there was not much new in here for me on this second go-round.

So interesting and thought provoking

This book was super interesting and made me think a lot about food, psychology, and marketing. Would highly recommend for anyone interested in the subjects. But the best part is that it's relevant and applicable to most people as we all eat food lol

The read I was looking for on my weight loss journey

This book was so much more practical and less strict than other nutritional books. I’ve been on a journey to fix my eating and the tips provided are the kind of positive, simple adjustments that are actually practical. No definitive you cannot have this and you cannot have that. 10/10 would recommend

excellent

Excellent for everyone, not just for those trying to diet. Has a lot of interesting facts, and is easy to read.

Understand why we eat the way we eat!

Would you consider the audio edition of Mindless Eating to be better than the print version?

Yes, because it is very light content and the information was more like storytelling.

What did you like best about this story?

I love the way how can we engineer our environment so that we can eat less. The book describes every chapter couple of engineering techniques that helps to re-shape the surrounding environment to eat better.

Which character – as performed by Marc Cashman – was your favorite?

The voice of the book was about the author talking to the readers about his findings and how did he researched this topic.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I loved the findings of how much people are oblivious about their eating habits. like the when the bones was cleaned regularly, people would eat more and expect they eat the same. Also, sharing food with people will affect how much people will eat.

Any additional comments?

This is an amazing book and I wish if the author can continue publishing books in the same area.

AMAZING

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

recommended

What did you like best about this story?

lose weight easily

Which character – as performed by Marc Cashman – was your favorite?

all good

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

all good

Any additional comments?

it worth money

Nice information

Is not about dieting or what foods to eat or not. It's about how you eat, how much you eat and that there is no "full tank" indicator to just stop eating when "full". What is full? What your brain says and it can be tricked to believe is not yet full, and of course those tricks are used by restaurants and companies to make you eat more than you need. The last part of the book was not so useful, but the first 75% is interesting and can help you to eat with care and to be aware of the tricks that are used on you.

Important tips, a bit dry but worth it

Listened while at the gym. Would lose concentration but it was good to hear the tidbits. Got some actionable things to implement in my life, like smaller plates and eating for volume.

Fantastic book

This is one of my absolute favorite books on health and wellness. a fascinating look at how marketing, packaging and environment impact our eating habits. I can't recommend it highly enough.

A life-changing new perspective

Mindless Eating is not only enlightening, after each illuminating chapter, it gives you manageable and genuinely practical skills to start adding to your daily routine. It effectively teaches you basic new habits that work!

After reading far to many diet books, this is the one which has genuinely made a difference by providing me with easy to implement techniques to lose weight without ever having to diet again.

Brian Wansick also explains why we are addicted to pursuing the kind of diets that show quick results, but ultimately cause us to regain all the weight we lose. He certainly convinced me that losing weight in the same slow, quiet and insidious way that I gained it, is a lot easier than all the alternatives which have always ended up failing me in the long run.

I got so much from this book, I bought the print version for a reference after listening to the audio.