Mindless Eating

I will comment, that as much as I enjoy Mindful eating, I’m also a big fan of Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating….

Wansink does not give eating advice based on ideals of mindful-awareness, health or even nutrition. Wansink researches actual eating behavior.

The outcome of Wansink’s research is a series of small, ingenious environmental adjustments you can make to control your eating behavior — without thinking about it…i.e. mindlessly.

For example:

If you want to eat less, serve the food on a plate in a contrasting color. A cup of white fettuccine on a white plate will look like less food than the same cup on a contrasting red plate due to an optical illusion (Delboeuf illusion).

How much of a difference does this illusion make? People with white plates served themselves 22% more pasta than people with contrasting red plates.

See: http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/content/plate-size-and-color-suggestibility-delboeuf-illusion-bias-serving-and-eating-behavior