This is perhaps the most interesting book I’ve read in the last few years, right up there with Freakonomics. I’ve written briefly about Brian Wansink before, and I’m pleased to report that his book matches my initial impression of his work: it’s a neat hack. Wansink’s basic theorem is that, because there are so many environmental factors that influence how much people eat, you can manage your weight simply by juggling those factors to work in your favor. I tried using a smaller dinner plate for about a week and found that– sure enough– I did eat less, even though I didn’t feel hungry or deprived.
There are a ton of interesting anecdotes in the book, but Wansink is careful to knit them together into a simple plan: slightly change your eating habits as he suggests, and you’ll lose weight slowly (he proposes a simple estimate: cut N calories per day and you’ll lose N/10 pounds in a year). His focus is on weight management through environmental and portion control, which I think is pretty sound. Interestingly, there’s a good bit of overlap with The Hacker’s Diet, at least in terms of Wansink’s emphasis on gradual weight reduction instead of sudden changes in eating habits.
Wansink also engages in some pretty cool mythbusting; for example, he compares the number of calories people consumed with the number they thought they were eating at both Subway and McDonald’s. Result: people who ate at Subway, which heavily promotes its food as healthy, underestimated the number of calories they actually ate by as much as 20%. Oops.
Highly recommended as a fun read; the more so if you’re actually trying to control your weight.
Paul's Down-Home Page 