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| Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think | 
 enlarge | Author: Brian Wansink
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $6.50
You Save: $5.50 (46%)
New (51) Used (20) Collectible (1) from $5.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 8336
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0553384481
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.85260651
EAN: 9780553384482
ASIN: 0553384481
Publication Date: August 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: dc24
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| Customer Reviews:
 How Optical Illusions Help You Eat Well June 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
How can air in food make you more satisfied - make you eat less? How can it curb a tendency to be fat, or reverse a trend?
Can it? Turns out - yes.
Feed a hungry college student a half glass full of smoothie and they will eat 20% more at lunch later than the college student who drinks the SAME smoothie only whipped until it swells to a full glass with air. Not only that, but the ones that eat the airy smoothie don't make it up at their next meal.
My brother, John, and my food guru, Dick, have both recommended Mindless Eating and Volumetrics to you and me. I finally read them. Actually, John recommends listening to Mindless Eating as a book on tape, so that's what I did. I recommend it.
Listen to get the fun of it and the flavor of it. Then get the book to read the summaries of what to do.
Both titles don't really work to tell you their messages. The subtitle of Volumetrics is great - Feel Full On Fewer Calories. I'd rewrite that to read - Feel Satisfied on Fewer Calories.
It's not my job to re-title these excellent books. Mindless Eating deals with how our brains are tricked to eat more than we want by other visual cues and often by genuine optical illusions.
You could summarize Volumetrics - We don't eat calories, we eat size, volume. We are stratified by greater volume and not necessarily by greater calories. Satisfied means you eat less, means you lose fat and still feel, well, satisfied.
These are not deprivation diet books. DEPRIVATION DIETS DON'T WORK. And need I say, not fun.
The two cheapest ingredients in food are water and air. Adding air or water is the simplest way to feel more satisfied with no additional calories. You read about air in the smoothie above. Soup is food with water added. Raisins are grapes with water removed.
Let's see what that does for you...
Raisins
Which is more satisfying. cup of raisins or nearly 2 cups of grapes (50 ml or 500 ml). The metric numbers makes the size difference even more startling. Exact same number of calories. Exact same food. One has water; one doesn't.
Which would you choose if you wanted to feel most satisfied?
Yep, me too.
Soup is the Free Lunch of Satisfaction
I live on good soup, not words. - Moliere
Even though soup is mostly water, you and your body perceive it as food. This is very counter intuitive to me.
Proof? Give people a 270 calorie chicken-rice casserole and a glass of water as a first course to a luncheon.
Give another group the same casserole with the water added to it to make it a soup. Check both groups to see how much they ate for the rest of lunch.
The soup people ate 100 calories less of the lunch that followed and didn't make up the loss at dinner. Cool, yes! Soup created more satiety, satisfaction. Other experiments showed that chunky soup creates more satisfaction than strained soup. And hot and cold soups both create the same benefits.
You can read the physiology in the books if you're interested. But this seems like magic to me.
Bag the Peanut Butter
I over eat peanut butter; it is one of the highest density foods you can find. If I eat volume, then you have to eat a mountain of calories to get a decent volume.
If I lived alone, I would just not bring it into the house. Obviously you can use this useful tip for all your trigger foods. Since I live with the Mysterious Madame Ling, who likes peanut butter on apples, I simply put the peanut butter in a brown paper bag.
Not only is this -- Out of sight, out of mind -- it puts inconvenience into the circuit making it harder to mindlessly eat.
Note: You may be and I am on a seafood diet, I eat everything I see. Out of sight, out of mind.
OK, One Optical Illusion
People perceive tall as more than short.
Remember the optical illusion from childhood of the upside down T. They ask which is longer - the horizontal part or the vertical section.
People say the vertical is up to 20% taller when they are in fact the same length. (The illusion is so strong for me, that I got out a ruler and tested it.)
Tall thin glasses will have you drinking less wine, juice, or Coke. And again, you will feel satisfied. Remove the short squat glasses from your life, unless you want to increase your consumption of water, then the idea works in your favor. I drink water out of a Bavarian beer mug.
Action
If you have people in your family who need to monitor fat gain, get the books, read them, and then apply the tricks.
Eat well,
William
 Amazing June 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very interesting book. Gives you much to think about! Wish I had read it many years ago.
entertaining read June 7, 2008
This book was educational, a little scholarly (which I liked), but also highly entertaining. This is an excellent companion book to all the other healthy eating and nutrition books. It is especially for those who wish to loose weight, eat right, or simply know more about why people eat and the way manufacturers and businesses feed others.
Is this a diet book? May 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a great book that explains why we overeat without thinking. It promotes an awareness to how, why, when, and what you eat. By making the consumer aware of these issues a person can better mindlessly eat to a positive light.
(The first part of the book focuses on multiple studies showing people who over eat b/c the food is endless, the food is perceived to be expensive, the food is perceived to be healthier than another food choice, etc.) The author concludes telling us how we can make small 'mindless' changes to positively impact our eating habits.
The only con I see in this book is that it abruptly switches from study to study. That, however, is it's only flaw in my opinion. A slightly better flow would have made this book perfect.
The biggest positive I see out of this book is the fact that all the studies the author referenced were well presented and researched. You knew why the author was making the points he was making and the situations were real enough you could put yourself in them.
In turn, the studies and information in this book can be applied to our own lives. The author makes his point that small changes over time can make a huge impact on our eating habits. As a physical therapist, I applaude that because this advice can also be applied to our exercise habits as well as other areas of our lives.
The book reads pretty fast and is worth the read for those wanting to get a better hold on your eating habits no matter your weight. This book's advice can be helpful to all of us to be aware of where, what, and how we eat.
Mindless Eating April 6, 2008
It's funny, showing how people react if a "bottomless" soup bowl is used on unknowing students, they just keep eating-double or triple the normal amount. Totally unaware. Same for old, stale popcorn. The bigger the bag, the more eaten, even tho they complained it was awful! We all underestimate the calorie count in our portion size, and the tests were mostly done in a special restaurant, all items weighed etc. We always think the "expensive" wine is far better even though only the label was changed. It was all $2 buck Chuck.
If your overweight, this will be a big help!! If not, it's a very interesting read on human behavior.
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