Nov. 6, 2006 — Think much about that popcorn while you're eating it? Or that plate of pasta? That bowl of soup?
Probably not.
But Cornell University marketing professor Brian Wansink does. A lot.
Wansink isn't concerned about the food, exactly, but why you eat it. His goal is to uncover hidden cues that influence how much we eat. He wants to know if people grab more M&M's from a bowl if there are more colors (yes), if people tend to eat less popcorn at comic films like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" than during gloomy films (yes) and whether people are tuned into the subtle prompts like mood and setting that affect their eating (generally, no).
After years of sometimes unorthodox research, Wansink argues that a good way to lose weight is not by obsessing over carbs or banning trans fats, but by addressing dietary "hidden persuaders." He lays out the case in his new book, "Mindless Eating, Why We Eat More than We Think We Eat."
"So much of the answer lies not in counting calories, not in legislating, but in the middle range of what we can do by changing some of our own habits," Wansink said during an interview in his Food and Brand Lab on Cornell's upstate New York campus.
The lab's main room is designed to look like a kitchen, albeit one with tiny surveillance cameras, a two-way mirror and a food scale hidden beneath a dishrag on the counter. The idea is to provide a homey atmosphere where test subjects can eat, and an unobtrusive way for researchers to watch.
On a recent day, Wansink leaned close into the two-way mirror as postdoctoral researcher Collin Payne served Beefaroni and vegetables to a test subject — only to cough on the dish before he got to her seat.
The cough was choreographed, a ruse to force her to dish herself another serving, this time on a slightly smaller plate. Wansink wants to know if she will dole out a smaller portion on the smaller plate, which she does.
This sort of clever subterfuge is common to Wansink's experiments. Wansink once designed self-filling soup bowls that pump tomato soup up from under the table as people supped from them. He wanted to find out if people stopped eating without the visual cue of an empty bowl. Some people ate more than a quart.
