By CHRIS ROSENBLOOM
For the Journal-Constitution
Have you ever dined on last night's leftovers standing over the sink? How about eating peanut butter straight from the jar or gulping milk from the carton in front of the open refrigerator?
If this sounds like normal behavior, you could be a mindless eater. And chances are it's having an adverse effect on both your weight and general well-being.
Mindless eating causes us to "lose the satisfaction, both physically and emotionally, that food can provide," says Linda Paulk Buchanan, founder and co-clinical director of Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders. The consequences include not feeling satisfied, so food stays on our minds, leading to weight gain and contributing to the obesity problem for both children and adults.
"People who are too busy to eat throughout the day tend to make poor choices when they are really hungry and overeat at night," adds Buchanan.
We've all seen the effects of our busy — make that super busy — lifestyles: We eat in the car, we eat at our desks, or we skip meals entirely because we have no time to eat. There are many factors that turn us into mindless eaters, some we are aware of and some we are not.
Getting too hungry before mealtime, getting distracted while we eat, snacking in the car and dining on oversize restaurant portions can affect how much we eat. So do emotional states "such as boredom, loneliness and anxiety," says Buchanan.
Perhaps no one understands this better than food scientist and author Brian Wansink, a renowned authority on what causes Americans to overeat and author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think" (Bantam, $25). He is especially intrigued with how our environment influences us to consume more food than we realize. He studies the hidden cues that shape what and how much we eat. Some of his findings on portion distortion have influenced changes in the food industry — such as the creation of the 100-calorie snack pack.
"I grew up in Iowa in the middle of the food-farm belt, and I love to eat," said the trim, 6-foot-1 Wansink, for whom weight has never been a problem. "Yet, I've found that while food is a great source of pleasure, it is also a source of great concern. People seem very troubled by why they ate, what they ate or how much they ate. I realized that if I could shed some light on some of these choices, I might be able to make people eat less, eat better and enjoy it more."
Wansink's research shows that the average person makes around 250 food decisions every day, and most people cannot explain why they make the choices they do.
"Eating in America has little to do with hunger and more do to with family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, and cupboards and containers.
"By understanding how our environment influences our food habits, we can reduce the number of calories we eat each day without deprivation," he says.
But being aware of the triggers isn't enough, because they are simply too powerful to resist, and it shouldn't be a full-time job. The key is to rearrange our environment so we're more aware of what we eat, and enjoy the experience more.
HOW TO BECOME A MINDFUL EATER
Linda Paulk Buchanan, founder and co-clinical director of Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders, and eating behavior expert Brian Wansink and offer these tips for breaking the habit of mindless eating:
• Eat at regular times. "Rhythms are important in everything we do, from sleep to eating, so try to eat fairly consistently each day.
• Avoid other distractions while eating, except for music and conversation.
• Start your meal with "grounding" statements such as "I'm getting ready to eat" to set the tone and focus on the activity.
• Eat off a plate, not out of the package, and sit at a table for meals.
• Rate your hunger from 1 to 10, with 1 being extremely famished and 10 being that "post Thanksgiving" feeling. Eat when you are at a 2 or 3 and stop eating when you are at a 7 or 8.
• Put your fork down between bites and chew each mouthful thoroughly before picking up your fork.
• End the meal with an awareness of fullness and making a closing statement, like "I'm feeling satisfied and the meal is over."
In his book "Mindless Eating" (Bantam Books, $25), researcher and food scientist Brian Wansink studies the hidden cues that shape what we eat and how much we eat. Do you know which ones to watch out for? Take the quiz to find out.
1. Which of the following fast-food meals would you rate as the healthiest choice?
a) McDonald's cheeseburger, fries and diet drink
b) Pizza Hut personal pan pepperoni pizza and diet drink
c) Subway's 6-inch tuna sub, diet drink and oatmeal-raisin cookie
d) Ruby Tuesday's fresh chicken and broccoli pasta and diet drink
The (c) tuna sub or (d) fresh chicken and broccoli pasta, may sound healthier. But don't be fooled by what Wansink describes as the "health halo." When we eat what we perceive to be a healthy food, we tend to eat more and reward ourselves with extras — like chips or a cookie at Subway. For the record, the McDonald's and Pizza Hut meals both provide about 650 calories, while the Subway meal provides 730 calories. The fresh chicken and broccoli may contain nutritious ingredients, but this dish contains over 2,000 calories!
2. Three administrative assistants receive candy from their supervisors on Administrative Assistant's Day. Moe's candy dish is uncovered and sits on his desk; Larry's candy dish is made of opaque glass with a lid and sits on his desk; and Curly's candy dish is a metal tin that he places on the filing cabinet across the room. Who is most likely to eat less candy?
a) Moe
b) Larry
c) Curly
d) They will all eat the same amount of candy because it is in the office
The answer is (c), or as Wansink summarizes, "out of sight is out of mind." Moe is likely to eat about 75 extra calories every day because the candy is on his desk. Every time he sees the candy, he is tempted until he just gives in to the visual stimulation. The lesson of the "see-food" diet is to keep tempting foods out of sight to keep them off our hips.
3. Your sister loves jelly beans but she is trying to lose weight. Every year on her birthday, you send her jelly beans, but to encourage her to stay on her diet your best strategy is to send:
a) an assortment of 10 colors of jelly beans
b) a bag of mixed jelly beans that contains 20 colors
c) a tray with separate compartments of two colors of jelly beans
d) flowers
OK, (d) is definitely the best choice, but if jelly beans are your yearly gift and you don't want to break the tradition, go for choice (c). When presented with many different choices — shapes of pasta, colors of jelly beans, or flavors of ice cream — we will eat more than if given a limited choice. So while variety may be the spice of life, when it comes to food, variety is the kiss of calories.
4. At dinner with a friend, you are offered a free glass of wine from a vineyard in North Dakota. On another evening, you are offered a free glass of wine from a French vineyard. What you don't know is that both wines are the same California wine; only the labels have been changed. At which meal will you most likely consume more calories?
a) dinner with the North Dakota wine
b) dinner with the French wine
c) you will probably eat more food in both instances because you were offered free wine
d) the wine will cause you to feel full so you will eat less at both dinners
Wansink put this to a scientific test with a group of unsuspecting diners, and those who chose (b) French wine ate more. Our expectation, he reasons, is that French wine is superior to North Dakota wine and that will color how we feel — not just about the wine, but about the entire meal.
We are more likely to enjoy the meal, and eat more, when we think the wine is of a fine vintage. You can use this information to your advantage if you're trying to get your children to eat more healthfully; call broccoli "green trees" or asparagus "food spears" to entice them to eat.
5. You like to drink your juice out of a tall, skinny glass and your spouse likes to drink out of a short, squat glass. Who is more likely to drink more?
a) you, the tall skinny glass user
b) your spouse, the short, squat glass user
c) it makes no difference
The correct answer is (b), the short, squat glass user. Call it an optical illusion, but we underestimate the amount of beverage poured into short wide glasses and drink, on average, 74 percent more when we use short glasses. Even professional bartenders, who should know how much liquor to pour are fooled and pour more alcohol into short glasses. So you might want to replace your glasses with tall, slender ones to keep your portions in check.
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I've been reading the book Mindless Eating and its interesting- a little too pop psychology dumbed down for the average reader for my taste but it makes some interesting observations and the writer/food scientist who wrote the book did some interesting research... It's a good read...
The book has been referenced in a ton of articles in magazines and newspapers this month - so the above is kind of the gist of it - and I know many p eople here say they're emotional eaters an dmindless eaters - some of the tips offered above really do help.
