Brian Wansink

Brian Wansink (born 1960, Sioux City, Iowa) is an American professor of marketing and nutritional science. He is best known for his work on food psychology and behavior, which largely focuses on how the micro environment (supermarkets, packaging, homes, pantries, and tablescapes) influences what and how much people eat. Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, he is author of over 100 academic articles and books, including Mindless Eating (2006).

Biography

Wansink was born in Sioux City, Iowa of Dutch heritage, to John, a bakery production worker, and to Naomi, a secretary. After receiving his Batchelor's in Business Adminstration at Wayne State College in 1982, he moved on to Drake University and later receved a Ph.D. in Consumer behaviour in 1990 from Stanford University, he was a marketing professor at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College (1990-1994), the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (1995-1997), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1997-2005) before moving to Cornell University. He has also been a visiting professor or scientist at the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), Insead (Fountainbleau, France), and the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center (Natick, MA).

He founded the Food and Brand Lab in 1997 at the University of Illinois and moved the Lab to Cornell in 2005. In 1999, he founded the Consumer Education Foundation, which received non-profit status in 2005. The Foundation is supported from book royalties and speaker fees, and its primary aim is to give gifts that support the expenses for science fair and 4-H research projects involving food and consumer-related issues.

Works

Wansink is best known for his work on food psychology and behavior. This focuses on the environmental factors that influence the purchase and consumption of food in ways in which consumers are often unaware. Using a combination of lab studies and field studies, his research has used movie popcorn, refillable soup bowls, bartender glasses, candy dishes, Chinese buffets, and ice cream socials to show how various environment cues influence the food intake of unknowing consumers. Although such environmental factors appear unrelated, they generally influence intake by inhibiting consumption monitoring and by suggesting alternative consumption norms.

In contrast to focusing on the macro-food environment as being the cause of the American obesity problem, Wansink's work focuses on the intermediate micro-environment that he contends people can control -- their home and their daily habits.

In examining the wider range of what is referred to as "mindless eating," Wansink has made contributions to three principle areas of food-related consumption: consumption norms, taste evaluation, and food selection.

Consumption Norms

Consumption norms are influenced by the wide range of factors that can bias an unknowing person to eat or drink more than they otherwise would. For instance, the size of a serving bowl, a plate, or a package has repeatedly been shown to bias how much a person eats by an average of 20-30%. In addition, the perceived variety (color or candies) in an assortment and the proximity of candy on one’s desk has been shown to double how much a person eats over the course of a day.

Taste Evaluation

The extent to which people enjoy food can be influenced by subtle environmental cues. The names of a food can create either positive or negative predispositions toward evaluation that lead people to seek confirmatory cues that will validate our expectations. In one study, simply labeling a food as being a Succulent Italian Seafood Filet generated much more favorable taste ratings than when it was simply labeled Seafood Filet. Similarly, elegance of dishes and the garnishes on plates has been shown to influence a person’s taste ratings of a food.

Food Selection

The food a person eats at a given time is related to sensory issues, but it is also related to how appropriate they perceive this food for that situation. People are more likely to adopt a food into a new situation (say, eating soup for breakfast) if they focus on the benefits of the food instead of on how it differs from prototypical breakfast foods. Food selection has also been linked to favorable past memories of food. This has been suggested as to why men tend to claim their favorite comfort foods are meal-related foods, such as steak, pasta, and soup, while women prefer the more convenient foods, such as ice cream, chocolate, and cookies. For men, meal-related comfort foods evoke feelings of nurturing and attention. Yet for women they evoke memories of preparation and clean-up.

Books

• Consumer Panels (Second Edition) (2002), AMA: Chicago, IL. (with Seymour Sudman) ISBN 0-8775-7297-6.
• Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design – For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires (2004), San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (with Norman M. Bradburn and Seymour Sudman). ISBN 0-787-97088-3.
• Marketing Nutrition – Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity, Champaign (2005), Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02942-9.
• Mindless Eating – Why We Eat More Than We Think (2006), New York: Bantam-Dell. ISBN 0-553-80434-0.

Selected research articles

• "Can Package Size Accelerate Usage Volume?" (1996) Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60:3 (July), 1–14.
• "When are Stockpiled Products Consumed Faster? A Convenience-Salience Framework of Post-purchase Consumption Incidence and Quantity," (2002) Journal of Marketing Research, 39:3 (August), 321–335. (with Pierre Chandon).
• "Exploring Comfort Food Preferences Across Gender and Age," (2003) Physiology and Behavior, 79:4–5, 739–747. (with Matthew M. Cheney and Nina Chan)
• "Environmental Factors that Increase the Food Intake and Consumption Volume of Unknowing Consumers," (2004) Annual Review of Nutrition, Volume 24, 455–479.
• "The Influence of Assortment Structure on Perceived Variety and Consumption Quantities," (2004) Journal of Consumer Research, 30:4 (March), 519–533. (with Barbara E. Kahn)
• "Super Bowls: Serving Bowl Size and Food Consumption," (2005) JAMA – Journal of the American Medical Association, 293:14 (April 13), 1727–1728. (with Matthew M. Cheney).
• "De-Marketing Obesity,” (2005) California Management Review, 47:4 (Summer), 6–18. (with Mike Huckabee).
• "Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake," (2005) Obesity Research, 13:1 (January), 93–100. (with James E. Painter and Jill North).
• "Shape of Glass and Amount of Alcohol Poured: Comparative Study of Effect of Practice and Concentration," (2005) BMJ – British Medical Journal, 331:7531 (December 24) 1512–1514 (with Koert van Ittersum).
• "Nutritional Gatekeepers and the 72% Solution,” (2006) Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 106:9 (September), 1324–1327
• "Ice Cream Illusions: Bowl Size, Spoon Size, and Self-Served Portion Sizes," (2006) American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 31:3 (September), 240–243. (with Koert van Ittersum and James E. Painter).
• "Meal Size, Not Body Size, Explains Errors in Estimating the Calorie Content of Meals," (2006) Annals of Internal Medicine, September 5, 145:5 (September 5), 326–332. (with Pierre Chandon).

Bibliography

• "The Wizard of Why" by Robin Jenkins Mather Chicago Tribune, 3-30-05, Section 7, pp 1+
• "Seduced By Snacks? No, Not You" by Kim Severson New York Times, 10-11-06, pp. D1+.
• "Just Put Your Mind to It" by Nanci Hellmich USA Today, 10-11-06, p. 5D.
• "New Tricks for Eating Better and Less..." Fitness, 11-06, pp. 16-18.
• "I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing" by Patricia Volk, O Magazine, 11-06, pp. 229-233.

External links

• Wansink’s home page
• The Cornell Food and Brand Lab
• Official Mindless Eating community website