Slim by Design

Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life

By: Brian Wansink

Narrated by: Brian Wansink

Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

In Slim by Design, leading behavioral economist, food psychologist, and bestselling author Brian Wansink introduces groundbreaking solutions for designing our most common spaces - schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and home kitchens, among others - in order to make positive changes in how we approach and manage our diets.

Anyone familiar with Wansink's Mindless Eating knows this is not a typical diet book. Wansink shares his scientific approach to eating, providing insight and information, so we can all make better choices when it comes to food.

The pioneer of the Small Plate Movement, Brian Wansink presents compelling research conducted at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University by way of cartoons, drawings, charts, graphs, floor plans, and more. Slim by Design offers innovative ways to make healthy eating mindlessly easy.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2014 Brian Wansink (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

Another Weird Diet Book

This is basically a self-help book with most of the defects of the genre. The author ecstatically supports his premise, and presents lots of evidence to support his ideas, but never rigorously tests his ideas. There are quite a few very good common sense ideas and the ideas all seem plausible, particularly with the short term evidence presented.

There are a bunch of very short term experiments described (like moving chocolate milk to the back of the school milk case which results in lower chocolate milk sales). Perhaps, but my experience of teens is once they re-find the chocolate milk, they will quickly return to their previous behavior. I don’t recall any long term controlled studies of the ideas presented. After finishing the book I tried to find long term studies online, but found promo-videos and other descriptions of the same short term studies.

The author repeatedly discusses things that thin people do differently than fat people (like sitting far from the buffet and not facing the buffet), then strongly implies that people who do the things thin people do will become thin people. While there are some key areas where this is clearly true (like calorie intake and exercise) I am dubious sitting facing away from the buffet will really reduce weight in the long term.

After finishing the book, I began wondering if the ideas presented there would work for alcoholics as well as foodoholics. Would hiding your vodka in the hall closet, or sitting not facing the bar, or making sure all the alcohol is out of sight, or using a smaller basket when buying booze, or giving enticing names to non-alcoholic drinks, or using small glasses, or hiding the hard stuff in a drawer, really deal with a drinking issue? I have dealt with several alcoholics and they committed to just about every one of these ideas, and guess what, THEY WORKED! For a few days. In the long run they didn’t work. What did work? Either the tough personal decision to stop drinking or committing to getting help. I was quite dubious these kinds of changes without the tough personal decision part would be successful in weight loss.

There is a PDF associated with the book with some pictures illustrating some of the books points and several assessment test.

There are some good ideas like keep foods that are good for you prepped and convenient, but this actually takes a substantial commitment to buying the healthy food, prepping the healthy food, and eating the healthy food before it goes bad. That is basically was we used to call healthy eating.

Resigned and his papers retracted

I think anyone considering purchase of a Wansink book should know that he has resigned his position at Cornell University under a cloud and had numerous papers retracted from JAMA and other medical journals. See the article in December 26 2018 Washington Post.

Important, insightful, and a little repetitive

This sort of book isn't usually my cup of tea, but my wife told me to read it. I was very impressed by the substance of this book, and the fascinating research behind it.

I'm giving it a very high rating because, though the book has some flaws, it's contents should be read by everyone.

Great information!

Love the science behind it all!! There is so much more than just the food! Thanks for educating!

liked it, didn't love it

interesting info but pretty repetitive
narrator's voice was distracting
liked hearing about the research studies

great ideas... but, who is this book for?

I love the science and the movement he's trying to create, but the book is all over the place.

It's for people who want to lose weight, and parents who want their kids to be healthy, and restaurant owners, and school administrators, and grocery store owners.

There's so much extra (read: "not necessary") stuff, it should have been broken into three or four books.

Environment is everything

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

This book could be summed up in a tweet: design your home/work environment in such a way that you don't cheat and stay healthy.

What could Brian Wansink have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Added more cases, more reflective thoughts on the struggles of people who cannot control their environment, tapping into the psychological blocks that impede people from thinking like the disciplined ones. A more how-to guide that is easy to implement and start using.

Was Slim by Design worth the listening time?

No.

Good info poor delivery

I liked the idea of this book but it is so full of itself that the actual information is buried in 4 hours of stories. save your money and just go to slimbydesign.com.

Good book, interesting research!

Any additional comments?

This book was good and the research he presents was interesting and definitely worth thinking about. The only thing that is slightly annoying is he is clearly selling the phrase "Slim by design" because he says it over and over, like a sales pitch. Other than that bit, it is a very good book.

Great first half, but this is more of a reader

because you can select and choose your "type" of lifestyle and changes to go with it, there was a ton of redundancy and irrelevant info. still, amazing ideas and meticulous research. I learned a lot in the first half.