Word: wansink
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...this delights Brian Wansink, the marketing professor who runs Cornell University's food lab. That's mostly because everything delights him. Though he looks a little like the actor Aaron Eckhart, Wansink has all the nerdlike characteristics you'd expect from a mad professor: he has a brain-slammingly loud laugh, overuses the word cool and may be the world's most excitable 47-year-old. He uses this energy to keep about 50 food experiments going at various stages. Most of these studies underscore the lack of conscious decision making that goes into how much, and what...
...Wansink's knowledge impressed me, until I saw the back of his car, which is covered with empty soda cans and McDonald's cups. Which is even stranger, since Wansink passed the first level of tests to be a professional sommelier and his wife was trained as a chef at Le Cordon Bleu. It's as if after all his studies, Wansink has determined that there's no point in trying to keep all the applesauce off the big plate. In his book, he advocates acknowledging how powerless we are and then taking steps to create a healthier eating environment...
...Wansink has a gift for finding quirky, interesting facts and applying them to improving the reader’s diet. Part of the appendix—“Defusing Your Danger Zones”—adopts both the language of existing diet plans and the common strategy of assigning people “types” and then providing solutions that feel individually-tailored. The book’s format is made accessible with large-spaced type, frequent graphs, and inset quizzes, such as one where readers attempt to match the personality type to the matching flavor...
...approach to books as yet another product to be marketed has its downside. In some ways, “Mindless Eating” is intellectual instant gratification, the literary equivalent to delicious but airy cotton candy. Though Wansink explores the possible implications of the studies for weight loss strategies, he never considers any of the greater implications...
...about the brands and companies that are using studies like those discussed in “Mindless Eating” to further their own aims? Such questions are pushed aside by the more accessible “Power of Three Checklist” and quizzes showing soup-personality correlations. Wansink never makes any pretensions to discussing the greater ideas and problems suggested by the research, but by the end of the book you wish...