Mindless Eating

On Tuesday, August 28th, the paperback version of Mindless Eating is being published and will be available in bookstores.

Something funny happened when Mindless Eating was published last fall. Regardless of who I talked to – dieters, students, neighbors, physicians, CEOs, or famous journalists – whenever they heard the title of my book, they almost all said the exact same six words: “Mindless Eating! That sounds like me!”

These people and others have asked a tremendously wide range of insightful questions. About 12 of these questions I’m asked at least 3 times a week.

For the next 12 weekends, I’m going to write out my answers to these questions a post a new one to start each week. The first question will be one I was just asked again last night:

“Why don’t you ever say anything about exercise?

The two not-so-magical secrets of losing weight are eat less and move more. For most people, it’s easier to eat a little less than to move a little more.

Consider the Three Mile Donut. If we strapped on our track shoes, plugged in our iPod, and walked as quickly as possible for 30-40 minutes, we’d cover no more than three heart-pounding miles – at the very most.

Now suppose after catching our breath we realized we were standing in front of a Dunking Donuts store. If we celebrated our workout with a Dunking Donuts coffee and a chocolate frosted donut (360 calories), we would polish off more calories in a minute than the 275 calories we burned off to get there.

People who start exercise programs often claim to gain weight in the first couple of weeks. My Food and Brand Lab has started investigating what we call Calorie Compensation. We’re finding that almost all of us believe that we burn more calories exercising than we actually do. The problem is that after we exercise we often over-rewarded ourselves with that Häagen-Dazs pint, and that’s where quickly undo the good.

Exercise should be an important part of everyone’s life for its health and fitness benefits. But when it comes to weight control, most of us will probably find it easier to eat one less donut than to walk three more miles.

In Chapter 10 of “Mindless Eating” I talk about a number of trade-offs people have made that still allow them to keep things in balance without exercising. The range of ideas for what works for different people is refreshingly huge.

What works for you? When you don’t have time or care to care regularly exercise, what’s a food trade-off (a food you give up) you make to help keep your weight in balance?

On Wednesday, I begin as a columnist for Prevention.com — which will be launched on August 15th. What is especially cool are the videos they’ve shot. Hope you enjoy them.

Brian

In the past 48 hours — in conversations with 60 Minutes and with the Ad Council — one big issue was repeated. It was aboutd how words make us overeat.

Here’s what we’ve found. Using only two words, I bet I could get you to overeat a snack you don’t even really like.

Those two words would be “low fat.”

We’re living in a world of fat-free, carb-free and sugar-free snacks. Most of the time, if we think they are at least low fat, we think “it must be good for us” — even if the snack is loaded with sugar.

When Nabisco came out with SnackWell’s, a line of no-fat and low-fat cookies and crackers, they flew off of shelves, gobbled up by the people who believed they could eat them until they magically whittled down into a supermodel. Six months later and about 6 pounds heavier, the low-fat fanatics finally realized that these cookies had about only 30 percent fewer calories than regular cookies.

This happens all the time. Often the fat-free version is not much lower in calories than the regular version. For example, each low-fat Oreo cookie has 50 calories. The regular version has just over three calories more.

Low-fat labels can lead us to mindlessly overeat a product with guilt-free abandon.Take granola. Where low-fat granola is indeed lower in fat, it is only about 12 percent lower in calories. It does not take a lot of mindless munching to scarf down an extra 12 percent of granola, especially while thinking you are doing your body good.

During a recent experiment, a French colleague, Pierre Chandon, and I invited people to watch some commercials and a video episode of the “Dukes of Hazzard.” We gave them bags of granola that were labeled as either “Low-fat Rocky Mountain Granola” or “Regular Rocky Mountain Granola,” as we described in the current issue of Journal of Marketing Research. In reality, all of the granola was low fat. While people watched the video, they ate the granola. Those given what was labeled as low-fat granola kept munching long after the other group stopped. After the movie, we weighed the remaining granola to see how much had disappeared. It turned out that those eating what they thought was low-fat granola ate 35 percent more, which translated into 192 more calories. When we offered them low-fat chocolate, they loaded up on 23 percent more calories.

The low-fat label tricked people into eating more than if the product had a regular label.

The cruel twist is that these labels can have an even more dramatic impact on those who are overweight.
People who are overweight and eat more than their thinner peers are in danger of really over-indulging when they see something with a low-fat label.

The problem is that when we are looking for an excuse to eat something, low-fat labels give it to us.

What’s worse than overeating a snack?

Overeating one we don’t even really like that much. Few low-fat snacks are nearly as tasty as their regular version.

So rather than overeating something you don’t even really like, enjoy the regular version — but only half as much of it.

Your stomach can’t count calories.

It can’t count the number of spoonfuls of Golden Grahams cereal you had for breakfast. It can’t count the number of ounces in the overpriced Frappuccino you drank on the way to work. It can’t count the number of french fries you inhaled in the first 90 seconds of your lunch break. It doesn’t know how many scoops of the aptly named Chubby Hubby ice cream (a whopping 330 calories per half-cup) you ate standing in the front of the refrigerator when you got home.

Our stomachs just aren’t designed to keep accurate track of how much we have eaten. If we could really see all that we’re putting in our mouths, we’d probably eat a lot less.
Despite the cliché, our eyes are typically not bigger than our stomachs. In fact, our eyes are often better at telling us how much to eat than our bellies. That’s because it takes about 20 minutes after we eat before our stomach starts registering that we’re full.

If you could look back and see all of the handfuls of potato chips you’ve already gobbled before shoveling in another, you’d likely hestitate before reaching back into the bag.

But we’re hungry!
We can’t count on our memories to help us, either. Take the popular but diet-destroying all-you-can-eat buffet.

In a study published this month in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, my colleague Dr. Collin Payne and I promised a free chicken wing buffet to 52 graduate students (17 men and 35 women) while they watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar in Urbana, Ill. As part of the study, the waitresses were instructed to clear the dishes at only half of the tables.

If people had their tables continually cleared, they continually ate. Clean plate, clean table, get more, eat more. Their stomachs didn’t keep track of how much they’d eaten, so the students kept on eating until they thought they were full. Each of these people ate an average of seven chicken wings apiece.

The students who did not have their table bused were less of a threat to the chicken population. After the game was over, they had eaten an average of two fewer chicken wings per person — that’s 28 percent less than those whose tables had been bused.

The chicken-wing gobblers didn’t believe they were influenced by a clean table — they simply didn’t remember chowing down as much as they did. They claimed they ate so much because they were hungry. That’s the big danger of not having visual cues.

Seeing is believing
Do yourself a favor — make sure you see the food before you eat and while you eat it.

We find that when people put everything on their plate before they start eating — including, snacks, dinner or dessert — they eat about 14 percent less than when they take smaller amounts and go back for seconds or thirds.

Instead of eating directly out of a package or box, put your snack in a separate dish and leave the box in the kitchen. You will be less likely to eat more and more … and more.
Whether you are eating chicken wings or cookies, you’ll eat less if you see what you’ve already eaten.

The same is true for beverages — it’s easy to forget how much soda you’ve guzzled if there’s nothing to remind you. So keep your eye on the empties.

For that matter, if you want to keep friends from overimbibing at your next dinner party, keep the empty wine bottles on the table and pour refills into fresh glasses without clearing the others.

Not only will you spend less party time cleaning up, seeing the evidence of how much they’ve drunk could help your friends get home more safely.

There’s a bigger picture of Mindless Eating. A nice column in the New York Times tomorrow points this out.

If you get a chance, check out David Leonhardt’s column for May 2, 2007. It’s at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/business/02leonhardt.html

All my best,

Brian

Last weekend we wrapped up our 8th annual Consumer Camp. The theme was “The Science of Snacking” and during it we demonstrated how what we don’t know about snacking can put on the pounds. Fun demonstrations, exercises, videos, and so on. We had “campers” visit from 9 different states.

Good Morning America was at the camp and will be broadcasting a nice segment about it on Monday April 23th between 8:00 and 9:00.

More on next year’s camp will be found at http://www.mindlesseating.org/consumer_camp.htm.

Thanks to all the people that made this camp go so well.

The two not-so-magical secrets of losing weight are eat less and move more. For most people, it’s a whole lot easier to eat a little less than to move a little more.

Consider the Four Mile Donut. If we were to walk as fast as we could for an hour, we’d cover a breathless, heart pounding 3-4 miles. If we then decided to celebrate our workout with coffee and a donut, we would eat more calories in a minute than we burned off in an hour.

People who often start exercise programs claim to gain weight in the first couple weeks. My Food and Brand Lab has started investigating what we call Calorie Compensation. We’re finding that almost all of us believe that we burn more calories exercising than we actually do. The problem is that after we excerise we often try to reward ourselves with that pint of Ben and Jerry’s, and that’s where things go wrong. If we pat ourselves on the back, we should also pat ourselves on the stomach because that’s where all those calories are going.

Exercising is an important part of our life and of good health other than just our weight. But for most of us, it will probably be easier to eat one less donut today than to walk four more miles.

All my best,

Brian

(Having said this, I personally try to exercise when I can. I ran the Boston Marathon and ran Hemmingway’s “Running of the Bulls” route in Pamplona, Spain . . . only it was one month ahead of the bulls.)

Since Mindless Eating has come out, I’ve had some great opportunities to meet some very inspiring and inspired people. One of these is John Biundo, whose web-site, www.TheDietChannel.com provides some great summery information in helping better understand what’s what in the diet world. It’s very clean, insightful, and helpful.

I was pleased when John and his team expressed an interest in helping promote the National Mindless Eating Challenge to a wider group of people. It shows a committment to helping people move more in the direction they want to be. There’s more on the site: “http://www.thedietchannel.com/national-mindless-eating-challenge”.

All my best this weekend,

Brian

Using only two words, I bet I could get you to overeat a snack you don’t even really like.

Those two words would be “low fat.”

We’re living in a world of fat-free, carb-free and sugar-free snacks. Most of the time, if we think they are at least low fat, we think “it must be good for us” — even if the snack is loaded with sugar.

When Nabisco came out with SnackWell’s, a line of no-fat and low-fat cookies and crackers, they flew off of shelves, gobbled up by the people who believed they could eat them until they magically whittled down into a supermodel. Six months later and about 6 pounds heavier, the low-fat fanatics finally realized that these cookies had about only 30 percent fewer calories than regular cookies.

This happens all the time. Often the fat-free version is not much lower in calories than the regular version. For example, each low-fat Oreo cookie has 50 calories. The regular version has just over three calories more.

Low-fat labels can lead us to mindlessly overeat a product with guilt-free abandon.Take granola. Where low-fat granola is indeed lower in fat, it is only about 12 percent lower in calories. It does not take a lot of mindless munching to scarf down an extra 12 percent of granola, especially while thinking you are doing your body good.

During a recent experiment, a French colleague, Pierre Chandon, and I invited people to watch some commercials and a video episode of the “Dukes of Hazzard.” We gave them bags of granola that were labeled as either “Low-fat Rocky Mountain Granola” or “Regular Rocky Mountain Granola,” as we described in the current issue of Journal of Marketing Research. In reality, all of the granola was low fat. While people watched the video, they ate the granola. Those given what was labeled as low-fat granola kept munching long after the other group stopped. After the movie, we weighed the remaining granola to see how much had disappeared. It turned out that those eating what they thought was low-fat granola ate 35 percent more, which translated into 192 more calories. When we offered them low-fat chocolate, they loaded up on 23 percent more calories.

The low-fat label tricked people into eating more than if the product had a regular label.

The cruel twist is that these labels can have an even more dramatic impact on those who are overweight. People who are overweight and eat more than their thinner peers are in danger of really over-indulging when they see something with a low-fat label. The problem is that when we are looking for an excuse to eat something, low-fat labels give it to us.

What’s worse than overeating a snack?

Overeating one we don’t even really like that much. Few low-fat snacks are nearly as tasty as their regular version. So rather than overeating something you don’t even really like, enjoy the regular version — but only half as much of it.

———

Each year the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab hosts Consumer Camp in Ithaca, N.Y. Through demonstrations, presentations and hands-on activities, this year’s free event, April 13-15, shows consumers how knowing the psychology of snacking can help them better control what they and their families eat.

Check out the following for more information. http://www.mindlesseating.org/consumer_camp.htm

Using only two words, I bet I could get you to overeat a snack you don’t even really like.

Those two words would be “low fat.”

We’re living in a world of fat-free, carb-free and sugar-free snacks. Most of the time, if we think they are at least low fat, we think “it must be good for us” — even if the snack is loaded with sugar.

When Nabisco came out with SnackWell’s, a line of no-fat and low-fat cookies and crackers, they flew off of shelves, gobbled up by the people who believed they could eat them until they magically whittled down into a supermodel. Six months later and about 6 pounds heavier, the low-fat fanatics finally realized that these cookies had about only 30 percent fewer calories than regular cookies.

This happens all the time. Often the fat-free version is not much lower in calories than the regular version. For example, each low-fat Oreo cookie has 50 calories. The regular version has just over three calories more.

Low-fat labels can lead us to mindlessly overeat a product with guilt-free abandon.Take granola. Where low-fat granola is indeed lower in fat, it is only about 12 percent lower in calories. It does not take a lot of mindless munching to scarf down an extra 12 percent of granola, especially while thinking you are doing your body good.

During a recent experiment, a French colleague, Pierre Chandon, and I invited people to watch some commercials and a video episode of the “Dukes of Hazzard.” We gave them bags of granola that were labeled as either “Low-fat Rocky Mountain Granola” or “Regular Rocky Mountain Granola,” as we described in the current issue of Journal of Marketing Research. In reality, all of the granola was low fat. While people watched the video, they ate the granola. Those given what was labeled as low-fat granola kept munching long after the other group stopped. After the movie, we weighed the remaining granola to see how much had disappeared. It turned out that those eating what they thought was low-fat granola ate 35 percent more, which translated into 192 more calories. When we offered them low-fat chocolate, they loaded up on 23 percent more calories.

The low-fat label tricked people into eating more than if the product had a regular label.

The cruel twist is that these labels can have an even more dramatic impact on those who are overweight.
People who are overweight and eat more than their thinner peers are in danger of really over-indulging when they see something with a low-fat label.

The problem is that when we are looking for an excuse to eat something, low-fat labels give it to us.

What’s worse than overeating a snack?

Overeating one we don’t even really like that much. Few low-fat snacks are nearly as tasty as their regular version.

So rather than overeating something you don’t even really like, enjoy the regular version — but only half as much of it.

Each year the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab hosts Consumer Camp in Ithaca, N.Y. Through demonstrations, presentations and hands-on activities, this year’s free event, April 13-15, shows consumers how knowing the psychology of snacking can help them better control what they and their families eat.

Check out the following for more information. http://www.mindlesseating.org/consumer_camp.htm