01.23.07
How We Eat
Great stuff from BigPicture:
A fascinating example I came across recently this involves food, diet, and how we eat. Typical diet plans focus on what we eat: fat content, calories, quantity, and exercise (Note that the diet industry is estimated to be $40-100 B per year). It turns out our brains regulate our food consumption in ways we are not conscious of. Often, environmental cues will influence our food intake.
Brian Wansink (of Cornell) has been called the “Sherlock Holmes of Food.” He is the director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and is the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Wansink claims that our minds make more than 200 food-related decisions a day — most of them without any actual thought.
It turns out the circumstances of consumption greatly impact how much we consume. Consider these example from Wansink and Mindless Eating: (more…)