Brian Wansink Quotes

“Interestingly, however, we found that participants consistently underestimated their intake of the candies on their desks yet overestimated how much they ate when the candies were farther away.”

“Secretaries who had been given candies in clear desktop dishes were caught with their hands in the candy dish 71 percent more often (7.7 versus 4.6 times) as those given white dishes. Every day that dish was on their desk they ate 77 more calories. Over a year, that candy dish would have added over five pounds of extra weight. What is a little bit scary is that none of them would have probably known where those pounds came from.”

“As long as we believe it is food that causes us to overeat, we are lost. Television, friends, and weather seem pretty unrelated to what we eat. That’s why they have such a powerful effect on us.”

“At high levels, all of us — normal weight and overweight alike — underestimate calorie levels with mathematical predictability.”

“Beware of the health halo. The better the food, the worse the extras. People eating ‘low-fat’ granola ate 21 percent more calories, and those eating ‘healthy’ at Subway rewarded themselves by ordering cheese, mayo, chips, and cookies. Who really overeats — the guy who knows he’s eating 710 calories at McDonald’s, or the woman who thinks she’s eating a 350-calorie Subway meal that actually contains 500 calories?”

“Big dishes and big spoons are big trouble. As the size of our dishes increases, so does the amount we scoop onto them. They cause us to serve ourselves more because they make the food look so small.”

“In fact, 'diet' comes from a Latin word which means 'a way of life'.”

“In one study, people who listened to a lunchtime radio mystery show ate 15 percent more than those who didn’t. The basic rule: distractions of all kinds make us eat, forget how much we eat, and extend how long we eat—even when we’re not hungry.”

“It’s about as close to an established fact as things get in the social sciences: People who watch a lot of TV are more likely to be overweight than people who don’t.”

“Moods, however, do seem to influence what we choose to eat. People in happy moods tended to prefer healthier foods, such as pizza or steak. People in sad moods were much more likely to reach for ice cream, cookies, or a bag of potato chips.”

“People eat more when you give them a bigger container. Period.”

“People were almost twice as likely to reach for a comfort food when they were happy than when they were sad.”

“Serving sizes start to make sense only when foods are individually packaged.”

“Suppose you found yourself two miles from home without a ride. Although you could get home three times faster if you ran, most people would settle for walking. Running wouldn’t be worth the sweat and discomfort, and walking will get you there at a reasonable and painless rate. Each step brings you a little closer, and before you know it, you are halfway home and still moving forward.

It’s the same with mindlessly losing weight. It need not be a sweaty, painful sprint. It can be a slow, steady walk that begins with removing unwanted eating cues and rearranging your home, office, and eating habits so they work for you and your family rather than against you. These comfortable steps will add up — one or two pounds a month. Before long you’ll find yourself at home.”

“The beauty of impulse eating may be that you end up eating less—when you do eat—than someone who has been thinking about the food for hours. The more you think of something, the more of it you’ll eat.”

“The best diet is the one you don't know you're on.”

“The heavier a person was — American or French — the more they relied on external cues to tell them when to stop eating and the less they relied on whether they felt full.”

“The idea of eating better is do-able. While eating right is a long-term goal, eating better is something we can start today. Eating better entails small steps.”

“The real concern is with obese people. They typically underestimate how much they eat by 30 to 40 percent. Some think they eat half as much as they actually do.”

“The tendency to use a clock to tell yourself when you’re hungry seems to be especially strong for people who are overweight.”

“There's only one thing that's strong enough to defeat the tyranny of the moment. Habit.”

“Unfortunately, deprivation diets don’t work for three reasons:
1) Our body fights against them;
2) our brain fights against them; and
3) our day-to-day environment fights against them.”

“Volume trumps calories. We eat the volume we want, not the calories we want.”

“We can turn the food in our life from being a temptation or a regret to something we guiltlessly enjoy. We can move from mindless overeating to mindless better eating.”

“We overeat because there are signals and cues around us that tell us to eat. It’s simply not in our nature to pause after every bite and contemplate whether we’re full. As we eat, we unknowingly — mindlessly — look for signals or cues that we’ve had enough.”

“Hearing "can't" dares a person to find a workaround. It's a basic psychological theory called reactance - telling someone "no" just makes them want it more.”

“I still don’t think most nutrition education is very effective. People know that an apple is better for them than a Snickers bar, but they eat the Snickers bar anyway.”

“If a wave of veganism washed over the land, in six months there would be Broccoli Kings, Taco Bell Peppers, and McTofu Drive-Thrus.”

“If you want to be skinny do what skinny people do.”

“It isn't nutrition until it's eaten.”