 
An Institute for Research in Marketing Speaker Series Event.
October 24, 2007
On October 24, the institute hosted Brian Wansink, author of the best-selling book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, at its third speakers' series event. Wansink discussed the influence of advertising and marketing on eating habits to a diverse crowd of academics, business people, and students at the Carlson School of Management.
As the director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, Wansink seeks to help companies develop "win-win" strategies to help people eat more nutritiously and control their portions. In turn, companies watching portions and profits are able to leverage those strategies to build their businesses in a fast-paced, competitive marketplace.
In his talk, Wansink described what The New York Times has called his "brilliantly mischievious experiments about the psychology of eating," in which his research team has demonstrated that even diners who think they are immune to trickery and hidden persuasions fall prey to emotional and visual cues that are scarcely related to their actual hunger levels. "The cues are so ubiquitous that people think it's ridiculous that they would be tripped up by them," Wansink told the audience, but by eating party mix from a larger bucket or slurping soup from a secretly bottomless bowl, even quick-witted test subjects invariably find their portions less substantial and adjust their snacking, and their belts, to fit.
Wansink's work has led to innovations in the business world in the hope that what's good for the bottom line can also be good for the waistline. After all, Wansink laughed, the best diet is the one you don't even know you're on.
|
|
