I love food.
Deep dish pizza. Peanut butter M&Ms. DQ Oreo frappes. White chip macadamia nut cookies. Kettle cooked potato chips. Spaghetti made with Ragu's "Super Chunky Mushroom" sauce. These are just to name a very select few of my favorite foods. Even after losing 100 pounds, it is a daily battle to keep off the weight. The weight may be gone, but the appetite certainly is not.
That said, I'm constantly looking for ways to help keep my weight off. It is a deathly fear of mine, and I don't exaggerate when I say that I still weigh myself at least twice a day to ensure I'm not indulging too much into my favorite foods.
I actually stumbled across Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think unintentionally. As I like to do, I was listening to a podcast where Tim Ferriss was interviewing I Will Teach You To Be Rich entrepreneur Ramit Sethi, and like he normally does, Ferriss posed this question to Sethi: "What is the book you gift to people most often?" Ramit's immediate answer was Mindless Eating. But it wasn't for the reason you might think. Actually, Ramit said he shares it because of its profound impact on psychology.
And you know what? He's absolutely right.
EXPERIMENTS IN INDULGENCE
We'll get back to Ramit's thoughts in a bit, but for now, let's take a step back to share how the book poses itself. Despite Ramit's thoughts, author and Ph. D Brian Wansink makes no qualms about the focus of this book: it's about examining human behavior when it comes to our eating patterns. Being the former professor at the food lab at the University of Illinois - Champaign-Urbana (hey, I know that place!), most of the experiments discussed in the book come directly from that lab's results. Specifically, the U of I runs an experimental restaurant called "The Spice Box" where students and the public alike can join in a meal where a variety of things are tested. Folks who live in the same geographical location as me will obviously find this interesting given that the U of I is just a quick drive down the road.
The experiments themselves are extremely interesting in that the results they yield are contrary to what common sense or basic logic might tell you. Things like how people unknowingly eating soup out of self-refilling bowls will not stop eating even if they are well beyond the point of hunger. I don't want to spoil anything else, but needless to say, I think readers of all levels will be captivated by the results shared here.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOLOGY
Let's return to what Ramit Sethi had to say about the book. Despite having a focus on human behavior relation to food, Ramit recommends this book because of the larger implications it has on human behavior as a whole. And he really is right. After all, if we behave this way in something as trivial as food, then why wouldn't we expect those behaviors to surface in other areas of our lives?
Okay, I said I wouldn't spoil anything else, but I'm going to share one tidbit to help illustrate Ramit's point. In one experiment, office secretaries were given a dish of chocolates and asked to place them in specific spots in the office: in a desk drawer, on top of a desk, or on a filing cabinet across a room. The results found that these secretaries would eat more or less chocolates based on the placement of the dish. The dish placed across the room, while still visited, was visited far less than if the chocolates were placed on a desk. Even placing them within the desk showed fewer chocolates eaten than the ones on the desk, just because they were out of sight, out of mind.
Wansink shares that they have shared these results with food companies around the world, and some have taken extreme measures to eliminate all possible barriers from a consumer to the food. One company even developed a way to store its ice cream in the open without a glass door shielding it from the outside.
The reality is that even the most minute details have a wildly unforeseeable impacts, and this can translate beyond food. It's part of the reason why UX is such a hot topic these days: the more difficult it is for a consumer to navigate a website, the more likely they are to abandon their endeavor. Not good in our highly competitive, digital age.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
This is one book I'm immediately listening to a second time because of the practical application I'm gaining from it. Right now, I am focused on applications from a food perspective because I do struggle with keeping the weight off, and I'll share more about that in an upcoming post. It excites me to think about the possibilities I can try to make this endeavor just a little bit easier.
But that's not the only reason I'm re-reading this book. I'm going back through and making notes on how this can apply to human behavior as a whole because I firmly believe Ramit is spot on with his sentiments. Can the information gleaned from this book help me out in my day-to-day job? I think so, but I don't know what that looks like yet. Still, I'm optimistic!
Mindless Eating is one of the best books I've ever read. The experiments are interesting, the implications are mind blowing, and the readability is very accessible. The stories Wansink shares often contains wit and humor about them that make this book very easy to chug along with. I will definitely be checking out his follow up book, Slim By Design, and I would definitely recommend Mindless Eating to all readers.
***UPDATE***
Following the post of this review to Twitter, a man named Jordan Anaya (@OmnesResNetwork) replied to the tweet with a very interesting article about Brian Wansink's work. Wansink apparently shared a post on his blog (which has since been taken down to where I couldn't read it) that seemingly suggested students should basically fudge data to falsely support their hypotheses. (Again, I don't have access to Wansink's to original post, so I'm paraphrasing here.)
Anaya, a PhD-level mathematician, was able to use math to find a lot of discrepancies in Brian Wansink's work. Numbers that just didn't match up. Upon being questioned about these discrepancies, it was noted that Wansink was dodgy and very shaken up. Wansink did re-emerge, however, and basically assured folks he'd be more careful in the future.
I don't know math on the level that Anaya knows, but I see no reason to doubt Anaya's findings. Even though I couldn't make heads or tails of it, Anaya was very open about his findings regarding Wansink's work.
Obviously, this is troubling given that Mindless Eating was largely founded on this work. More so, I planned (and still plan on) referencing the work in this book in future posts, so I feel like I couldn't go without addressing Anaya's reply as he brings up very real concerns.
Anyway, I still think there is value in these studies, and I choose to believe them because they resonate in my own life. Stuff like eating off smaller plates has been referenced by people in the dieting community over and over that I can't not believe it's not true. (Triple negative c-c-c-combo breaker!) I also have to believe there is some validity in it if Ramit Sethi still recommends it, especially since he's all about no-nonsense stuff in his own work.
I could go on, but my wife is telling me I have to go play with the baby! Because I have zero involvement with academic communities that would use Wansink's work to found their own work, I'm definitely not at risk for any disingenuous academic practices. If you do find yourself in that community, I would advise looking at Anaya's work before citing Wansink's work.
That all said, I still recommend this book to the regular reader. I didn't feel right not acknowledging the discrepancies, so I felt the need to share with you all what Anaya shared with me. (And thank you, Anaya, for sharing this work!)
Comments
Post a Comment