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)

Very funny and interesting

What you will not find in this book is advice how to eat and diet better. What you will find are examples - supported by several studies - how people choose their food. It's really astonishing how details influence what and how much we eat. Knowing that, one could choose the meals better, provided we always think before we choose.

Eye-opening, practical, effective

Just finished listening. This Mindless Eating audiobook is informative, motivating, and rich with executable advice. I made several highlights to review again, and once I've revisited those in-depth, I'll give the whole a-book another listen. Narrator's voice and diction are PERFECT. Before I finished, my wife and I began implementing some of the simple suggestions scattered throughout, already resulting in shrinking waistlines and fatter wallets -- we're making better eating decisions because of the knowledge and advice bestowed by this a-book. Priceless. Truly worthy of 5 Stars all around.

Practical, inspiring

I am a yo-yo dieter. I enjoyed this book because for the first time ever, I feel like I have found a practical guide to not a diet, but a life change. I look forward to putting the things I've learned into action.

Makes you think.

As a true foodie and nutritional researcher, this book was invaluable. Brian Wansink has an amazing imagination for researching how people eat and more importantly, why. He describes the experiments with humorous detail, and makes research readable and understandable. This is critical info for those of us who are trying to improve our health and be conscious of our eating habits and patterns.

Best diet book on the market

Any additional comments?

I've read every Michael Pollan book (in defense of food, omnivours dilemma, cooked), Gary taubes book (why we get fat, good calories bad calories), Skinny Bitch, Jungle Effect, Rethinking Thin, Eat More Weigh Less, Atkins, South Beach. I had been obese for 15 years. I've been thin for almost two years now with a BMI of 23 and body fat of 8 percent. My BMI is the same as Lance Armstrongs in his prime. That being said, this book is as close to the most perfect diet book I've ever read. It gives solid advice and explains a lot. It explains why low carb works then stops working. It explains why we eat too much. But also, it entertains. The science is sound. The studies are interesting. The reading is good. Skip all the other books. Drink a few protein shakes and read this book.

Strategies and Tactics for Taking Control

I understand where Jim from Laredo was coming from; the author largely avoids the deeper philosophical implications of his work in exchange for a tighter focus on tactics. Read this book in order to begin to understand your eating and to begin to take control of the "mindless" portion of it.

Psychology theory, not a dieter's book

I was intrigued by the title because I thought the book could give me tips for weight loss. Why do I eat what I do? What can I do to change it? The book is a very good psychology theory book on why we eat what we do and backs up those findings with live studies performed by college professors and students. The findings are real and make sense, but if you're looking for quick weight loss tips or several chapters to help you with uncontrolled eating, this is not the book for you. I was looking for tips on weight loss and found some nuggets of wisdom (and common sense) buried in lots of data and studies. I rated this book relatively highly because, as a former psychology student, I did enjoy hearing about the studies and their results. But if I was just looking for quick diet answers, this book would have been disappointing to me.
In a nutshell,
- Think about the mindless things you eat out of habit. The author, Brian, provides the rule of thumb that you should take a "0" off the end of the calorie count of some snack you habitually eat and that will be the weight you will gain in a year if you continue that habit. For example, if you eat a snack every night that has 100 calories, in a year you will have gained 10 pounds. The reverse, he says, is also true. If you cut out a snack every night that has 100 calories, you will lose 10 pounds if your calorie intake is otherwise balanced.

Worth reading/listening to

Funny stories and good information. Helpful suggestions at the end on the mindless way to lose weight and keep it off.

Open your eyes

This helped me see the science behind eating. And will read it again to remind myself the power of suggestion.

this is too long of example after example....

This audio is forever!!! many many examples of sizes and how how to re-package, serve things up in smaller dishes... this didnt tell me anything new. I think it was okay ... i learn quickly so this was too long for me.