Welcome to the continuing diary series, "Let's Read a WHEE Book Together!" (a shameless rip-off of plf515's weekly "Let's Read a Book Together!"). This week, we'll be continuing with the chapter-by-chapter review of Mindless Eating, the 2006 book by researcher Brian Wansink.
WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink
Chapter One: The Mindless Margin
Why do we overeat?
In Chapter One, Wansink answers, "We overeat because there are signals and cues around us that tell us to eat."
We've seen this before in this diary series, of course. Dr. David Kessler's book refers to research on cues in multiple chapters. Brian Wansink is one of the working researchers who have produced the results that Kessler referred to. However, Kessler was primarily concerned with how the food industry manipulates cues to get us to buy more of their products. Wansink's interest is broader - he is interested in how cues influence all of the hundreds of food decisions that we make every day. Hamburger and fries, or grilled chicken breast with salad? Fruit or candy for dessert? Go back for seconds, or stop now? Most of the cues that influence these decisions are outside our conscious awareness - our responses are unconscious, or "mindless" as the title has it.
Wansink is famous for a number of whimsical studies on eating behavior. In chapter one, he describes a couple of them. The first study is the Movie Popcorn study.
Patrons of a Chicago movie theater were given a freebie - each patron received a medium or large bucket of popcorn, absolutely free of charge. What the patrons weren't told was that the popcorn had been popped nearly a week before and stored (in sanitary conditions) until it was thoroughly stale. How stale was it? After the movie, two different people asked for their money back (forgetting that they'd gotten the popcorn for free in the first place).
After the movie, Wansink and his graduate students took the buckets back...
...and weighed them to find out how much remained. The moviegoers who'd received the large buckets were told that research had shown that people who were served larger portions tended to eat more without realizing it, and asked if they thought they would do the same thing. Most thought they wouldn't be susceptible, saying "Things like that don't trick me", or "I'm pretty good at knowing when I'm full." Despite what they believed, those with the larger buckets ate half again as much as those with the medium-sized buckets. Over 50 percent more - almost 200 calories more, on average - just because they started with a larger bucket.
Wansink's next sample study took place in The Spice Box, the fine dining lab sponsored by the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The lab is run as a restaurant, but one that's open just 24 times a year, with only two seatings per night (at 5:30 and 7:00 PM). The restaurant/lab is used for studies in eating psychology as well as nutrition.
One one occasion, all the diners were offered a complimentary glass of wine with their meal. On one side of the dining room, the glasses were filled from a bottle that claimed to be from Noah's Winery - the label bore the boast "NEW from California." The diners on the other side of the room were also supposedly served wine from Noah's Winery, but those bottles confessed to being "NEW from North Dakota." Other than the different terroirs, the labels were identical, and so was the wine itself. What was the wine?
It was Charles Shaw, a.k.a. "Two-Buck Chuck." A wine that my English in-laws would call "plonk." It's probable that no one drinking their glass of "Noah's Winery" denture cleaner had their meals enhanced by the actual taste of the wine - but did the difference in the labels make a difference in how the diners perceived the experience? According to Wansink, they did. The diners who received the "North Dakota" wine enjoyed the wine less - AND enjoyed their food less. They also enjoyed less food - the "California" wine drinkers ate 11% more of their meal than the "North Dakota" imbibers. The diners who were given the "North Dakota" wine spent about ten minutes less time than the diners on the other side of the room. All that - just as a result of changing a couple of words on a wine label!
And just as in the Movie Popcorn study, the diners drinking the "North Dakota" vintage were told what the study was about, and asked if they thought they could be easily influenced by that kind of difference on the wine label:
For instance, with our different wine studies, we might say, "We think the average person drinking what they believe is North Dakota wine will like their meal less than those given the 'California' wine. Do you think you were influenced by the state's name you saw on the label?" Almost all will give the exact same answer: "No, I wasn't."
In the thousands of briefings we've done for hundreds of studies, nearly every person who was "tricked" by the words on a label, the size of a package, the lighting in a room, or the size on a plate said, "I wasn't influenced by that."
Lest his readers think Wansink is immune to this kind of mindless consumption, he tells a story on himself:
We believed that grocery shoppers who saw numerical signs such as "Limit 12 Per Person" would buy much more than those who saw signs such as "No Limit Per Person."
...
By the time we finished [our study], we knew that almost any sign with a number promotion leads us to buy 30 to 100 percent more than we normally would.
After the research was completed...another friend and I were in the checkout line at a grocery store, where I saw a sign advertising gum, "10 packs for $2." I was eagerly counting out 10 packs onto the conveyer belt, when my friend commented, "Didn't you just publish a big research paper on that?"
At this point, Wansink switches gears and discusses others' diet research. He notes that most people who start diets fail, and of those who lose significant amounts of weight, 95 percent gain weight back. Dieting is difficult, he says, because evolution is working against us. Like many diet skeptics, Wansink implies that reducing one's metabolism is an ever-present risk of dieting, but concedes that a diet that leads to no more than half a pound of weight lost per week probably won't lead to a metabolic slowdown. (In the endnotes to this section, he links to a study in Physiology & Behavior, but the article doesn't appear to be about metabolic slowdown.)
In any case, diets are about deprivation, and as Wansink says, "being deprived is not a great way to enjoy life." Our minds, bodies, and environment conspire against our determination to lose weight by deprivation. What's the alternative? According to Wansink, if we can maintain a calorie deficit of just 100 calories per day, we can lose weight slowly, without feeling deprived. This 100-calorie deficit is the "Mindless Margin" of the chapter title. Cutting back on one's daily intake by just a little bit is what Mindless Eating is all about.
Reengineering Strategy # 1:
Think 20 Percent - More or Less
At the end of every chapter in Mindless Eating, Wansink gives an easy-to-follow tactic to help one maintain a small daily calorie deficit and lose weight without feeling deprived. He introduces the first tactic by noting that while Americans eat until they're full, people in other cultures eat until they're no longer hungry. On Okinawa, the term is hara hachi bu, which means "eat until you're 80 percent full." Based on this, the 20 Percent - More or Less tactic is a two-part plan:
- Eat 20 percent less of calorie-dense foods like fats, sugars, or starches
- Eat 20 percent more of fruits and vegetables
Scheduled WHEE diaries
Feb 28
Sun AM - louisev
Sun PM - WHEE Open
March 1
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - WHEE Open
March 2
Tue AM - WHEE Open
Tue PM - WHEE Open
March 3
Weds AM - WHEE Open
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock (Kolata, Ch. 4)
March 4
Thurs AM - WHEE Open
Thurs PM - juliewolf
March 5
Fri AM - WHEE Open
Fri PM - Wee Mama (weekly diary)
March 6
Sat AM - bloomin (weekly diary)
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Wansink, Ch. 2)