Mindless Eating By Brian Wannsink Analysis

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink Mindless eating is something that we have all fallen a victim to, whether we recognize it in our daily lives, cognitively choose to ignore it, or it mindlessly goes unnoticed. As Brian Wansink put it, “We can turn the food in our life from being a temptation or a regret to something we guiltlessly enjoy. We can move from mindless overeating to mindless better eating.” The series of case studies that are illustrated and explained in the book “Mindless Eating” invite us to personally re-engineer our diets through various steps of mindfulness, eventually gearing us towards better eating and an overall healthier lifestyle. Wansinks’ book drew me in through his use of real life examples to emphasize the reality

The outcome was that the person with the 10 different colored M&M’s ended up eating 43 more M&M’s than the subject that was given a variety of 7 different colors. The subject that is given more colors mindlessly thinks that there is more variety to the food because there is more color, pushing him to dip his hand into the bowl again and again, despite knowing all M&M’s have the same flavor. Wansink’s solution to this mindless overeating matter: reengineering your tablescape to cut down what you eat by 15% or more (Wansink, 75). By doing so, we become aware of portion sizes and illusions that can trick our brain into overeating for us, without our present mindfulness or consent to the excess calories. This particular example was one of many that Wansink offered, in which he subsequently discusses precise and easy

A child’s food preferences are typically a direct reflection of their parents’ by the time they reach the age of two, which goes to show how the people who surround us have an enormous impact on our eating habits. Other factors that can influence our eating include advertisements in media, Wansink states,

“Is It Baby Fat or Real Fat? The answer partly depends on the parents. A study of 854 Washington State children under three years old showed that a child is nearly three times as likely to grow up obese if one of his parents is obese. If you’re overweight, your child has a 65–75 percent chance of growing up to be overweight. So, is that little paunch on your fourth grader baby fat? Not if you’re sporting the same paunch.”

As we have discussed in class, obesity is currently and progressively more and more a huge part of American culture, and it is not widely understood that there are more than a few underlying factors that cause obesity. Wansink narrows it down to explain that the environmental factors and habits of those who surround us largely shape each part of our food consumption and food lifestyle, and when those aspects change, so do our ways. By improving our eating patterns and surroundings, we are capable of creating a more sustainable food lifestyle for ourselves and our future