Mindless Eating

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Nicest of the Damned
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Mindless Eating

Post by Nicest of the Damned » Wed Oct 20, 2010 8:00 pm

I just read Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. He's the guy at Cornell who did the experiment that showed people eat more from self-refilling soup bowls than from regular ones:

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v13/n ... 0512a.html

In his book, he describes a plan for "mindlessly eating better" that will probably sound familiar to anyone on this board. He suggests three, easily do-able changes to your diet (what these will be will vary from person to person). He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips") and food rules (things like "no snacks") as templates for these changes. He mentions that experts in behavioral modification say it takes 28 days to make a habit.

There are some other interesting ideas in the book, too. He says that buying large containers of food influences people to eat more, as does using big plates and bowls.

He mentions the Half Plate Mod (though he calls it the Half Plate Rule), where half the plate should be taken up by vegetables rather than meat or starch. I came up with some other possible mods after reading his book (I posted these in the mods thread, these are the ones directly inspired by Wansink's book):

No eating from the package unless it is a single-serving package (and no, the last serving left in the package is not the same as a single-serve package). Even then, it's better to put the food on a plate or in a bowl before eating it. This rule applies at all times, not just on N days.

The package must be closed up and put away before you can eat. This is another rule that applies at all times.

If you must buy snack foods or sweets, always buy the smallest possible package (a single serving, or one for each person in the house, is best), with the smallest possible individual serving. Bite-size candy bars are preferable to fun-size or full-size ones, for example. There's research that shows that people eat more from larger packages.

Never buy more than one package of sweets or snack foods at a time, even if they're on a two-for-one sale. This is related to the large-packages issue.

Only buy non-food items, fresh fruits and vegetables, canned foods, and things that get cooked (or used as ingredients in recipes) at Costco. Don't even go to the parts of Costco where the other stuff is. This has to do with eating more from large packages.

Unless you're having a party, one kind of sweets or snack foods, or one favorite for each person in the house, is enough. Don't have more than one kind per person in the house at any one time. Finish or throw out what you've got before buying any other sweets or snacks (in our house, this was the Dad Rule). There's research showing that people eat more when there is a wider variety of foods to eat.

All meals, with the exception of a few holiday meals with guests, are served buffet-style. You take your plate into the kitchen, put food on it, then bring it to the table. There are no serving platters of food on the table (we generally serve the food right out of the pots it was cooked in, except on really special occasions). You may not nibble on the food on the way to the table, and no eating directly from the pots in the kitchen is allowed. People eat less when food is served this way, it's easier to serve yourself from a kitchen counter or island than to pass dishes around the table, and there are fewer dishes to wash. Win-win-win. (Wansink calls the style where the food is on platters on the table "fat-family-style")

Has anyone else read this book? Any thoughts on it?

wosnes
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Post by wosnes » Wed Oct 20, 2010 9:17 pm

I think a lot or us have read Mindless Eating. I have -- and it's been long enough ago that I've sold the book.

I was reading through your mods and realized that I already do most of them. I think of them as habits: they're just the way I do (and have done things) for a long time. I've done the "half-plate mod" for at least 10 years and some of the rest for longer than that. Way before I read Mindless Eating.

I don't shop at Costco (or similar stores) at all. I've never been able to justify it for the small amount of stuff I buy.
Nicest of the Damned wrote:There's research showing that people eat more when there is a wider variety of foods to eat.
I'm going to be writing a post about limiting variety. I've been thinking about it for months.
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do. Not that the nature of the thing itself has changed but our power to do it is increased." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You are what you eat -- so don't be Fast, Easy, Cheap or Fake."

marygrace
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Post by marygrace » Wed Oct 20, 2010 11:49 pm

He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips")
All the rest sound good and sensible, but I disagree with this. I don't think food should be used as a bargaining tool, as it can quickly spiralize into having a disordered relationship with food. I.e., you run so you can eat more. Better to just have consistent, moderate habits for eating and exercise.

Nicest of the Damned
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Post by Nicest of the Damned » Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:05 pm

marygrace wrote:
He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips")
All the rest sound good and sensible, but I disagree with this. I don't think food should be used as a bargaining tool, as it can quickly spiralize into having a disordered relationship with food. I.e., you run so you can eat more. Better to just have consistent, moderate habits for eating and exercise.
I agree with you, and disagree that food trade-offs are a good idea. In fact, I think rewarding yourself with food is generally not a good idea.

guadopt1997
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Post by guadopt1997 » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:57 pm

marygrace wrote:
He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips")
I disagree with this too. Because if you have to stop exercising at some point (say because you're having foot surgery, as I am, in January), then you also have to work on cutting down those treats you were having because you were exercising. Plus, your exercise could help you lose weight faster if you're not trading off.

On the topic of single-serving portions, last weekend there was a sale on Ben&Jerry's (my treat of choice). It was $3.50 a pint compared with $1.25 for the little containers, 4 of which make up a pint. I bought one of the smalls, since if I bought the pint, I'd eat the pint. So I saved $2.25. :wink: not to mention calories!
Liz
Weight goal: less than I weigh now
Basic goal: doing no-S for life

Nicest of the Damned
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Post by Nicest of the Damned » Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:51 pm

guadopt1997 wrote:
marygrace wrote:
He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips")
I disagree with this too. Because if you have to stop exercising at some point (say because you're having foot surgery, as I am, in January), then you also have to work on cutting down those treats you were having because you were exercising. Plus, your exercise could help you lose weight faster if you're not trading off.
This, and people tend to underestimate the calories in food, and overestimate the calories burned by exercise. A 700 calorie treat as a reward for 400 calories worth of exercise is one step forward and two steps back. Wansink's book even mentions that people tend to underestimate the calories they eat. He just doesn't seem to get from there to the conclusion that food tradeoffs are dangerous.

One food tradeoff I could see working is, "I will eat a piece of cake or a candy bar, but not both". A food-for-food tradeoff would be safer than a food-for-exercise one, though still not foolproof. Mindless Eating talks about how people underestimate the calories in foods they think of as "healthy". Trading off a 100 calorie serving of "junk food" in exchange for 150 calories of "healthy" food might have some benefits, but weight loss would not be one of them. Ordering a small fries instead of a large, though, would allow you to lose weight (assuming you didn't overcompensate in some other way). Eh, food tradeoffs are treacherous ground. I think I'll stick to simple rules.

marygrace
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Post by marygrace » Thu Oct 21, 2010 6:20 pm

This, and people tend to underestimate the calories in food, and overestimate the calories burned by exercise. A 700 calorie treat as a reward for 400 calories worth of exercise is one step forward and two steps back. Wansink's book even mentions that people tend to underestimate the calories they eat. He just doesn't seem to get from there to the conclusion that food tradeoffs are dangerous.
A most excellent point, and probably the reason why I see so many overweight runners and cyclists. When you think about it, it's really silly.

Nicest of the Damned
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Post by Nicest of the Damned » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:37 pm

guadopt1997 wrote:
marygrace wrote:
He suggests food trade-offs (things like "if I exercise, I can have potato chips")
I disagree with this too. Because if you have to stop exercising at some point (say because you're having foot surgery, as I am, in January), then you also have to work on cutting down those treats you were having because you were exercising.
If you trade off food for exercise, you don't learn how to eat sensibly if and when something happens that you can't exercise, or can't exercise as much any more. That kind of thing happens to people all the time. They have foot surgery, they injure themselves, they get a new job that requires longer hours, they have a kid, or they just get older. Exercise is all well and good, but it can't replace not eating too much:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 57,00.html

And that is what food-for-exercise tradeoffs attempt to use it to do.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:56 pm

I enjoyed this book and it's one of the few diet books (besides this one, of course :-)) that I recommend reading.

But I think Dr. Wansink is much stronger in the description department (i.e., showing what the problems are) than in the solutions he presents (like that dreadful tradeoff advice).

That being said, his observations mesh very well with no-s, and I actually cite him several times in the book. I think reading mindless eating can fortify you in your existing no-s habits, and (as it has for Nicest already) maybe even inspire some mods and intelligent dietary defaults if you're in the market for those.

A few of the Wansink references in the No S Diet book:

page 9:
Do people who stick with single- plate meals really
eat less than people who go back for seconds or thirds?
According to an experiment conducted by Brian Wansink
at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab,
single- platers ate an average of 14 percent less per
meal, despite the fact that they took much bigger initial
portions.

page 81:
In the book Mindless Eating, Dr. Brian Wansink
describes a study he conducted at the Cornell Food
and Brand Lab.1 Two groups of participants were given
a meal. One group was told to go into the kitchen and
preplate their food; they could put as much as they
wanted on their plates, but could do so only once. The
other group was allowed to refill their plates as often
as they liked. Predictably, the preplaters served themselves
much bigger initial portions than the refillers.
But when Wansink’s team measured how much food
each group had consumed at the end of the meal, the
refi llers had gone back for enough seconds and thirds
to consume 14 percent more total calories.


I don’t know if it’s fair to extrapolate from this one
experiment to society at large, but 14 percent more calories
is almost enough to account for the obesity epidemic
in and of itself (according to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, average daily calorie consumption has risen
by 16 percent since 1976).2 This simple, moderate change
in behavior ["no seconds"] has the potential to make a big difference.
page 82:
In Mindless Eating, Wansink describes another
experiment in which he fed each of his research subjects
a single bowl of soup— except that some of these
bowls weren’t really single: they had a secretly attached
hose that constantly refilled them. They were, in effect,
bottomless soup bowls; they stayed full no matter how
much the subjects in front of them ate. And so they kept
eating and eating (a whopping 73 percent more than
the controls without hoses) simply because they didn’t
get the visual cue of an empty bowl to tell them to stop.

page 155-156:
In Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink describes a curious
phenomenon: When products are marketed as
healthy, people eat more of them because they think,
“Hey, it’s healthy.†They’ll even go on to eat more of some
obviously unhealthy food because they think, “Hey, I
just ate something healthy, I’ve got virtue to burn.†They
feel somehow blessed by this contact with the healthy
food. Wansink calls this the “health halo†effect. And
it’s obviously very unhealthy. Don’t fall for it.
Reinhard

Imogen Morley
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Post by Imogen Morley » Sat Oct 23, 2010 5:03 pm

wosnes wrote:
I'm going to be writing a post about limiting variety. I've been thinking about it for months.
Looking forward to it!

Variety is a killer to me. Because I'd rather go out to shop for food only once a week, I end up with a packed fridge, and I have a REALLY hard time resisting a nibble of this or a bite of that. I was wondering if other people had problems with variety too.

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