Mindless Eating
The Basic Idea
Have you ever been snacking on a bag of chips as you’re working or watching TV and suddenly you reach into the bag to find it empty yet you don’t remember consuming that much food? If you have, then don’t feel bad because this phenomenon happens to more people than you think. The concept of mindless eating stems from psychological behaviours stimulated by a distracted brain and the repetition of a habitual behaviour.
The concept of mindless eating is the idea that the unconscious decisions we make about food can have profound effects on our diet and weight. In stands in contrast to mindful eating, which promotes behaviours such as eating slowly and without distraction, distinguishing between hunger and non-hunger triggers, and appreciating the smells and texture of your food. These mostly psychological behaviours could have a big impact in the way you consume food and in the long run, it could have impactful consequences on your health.
For example, binge eating can be a serious disorder requiring medical attention. But for most of us, it can happen occasionally during moments where we experience a personal high or low. During which, the act of eating has become a mindless act, and often done quickly. This can be problematic, since it takes your brain up to 20 minutes to realize you’re full. If you eat too fast, the fullness signal may not arrive until you have already eaten too much, leaving you not only physically uncomfortable, but mentally stressed at the amount of food you did not intend to consume.
There’s only one thing that’s strong enough to defeat the tyranny of the moment. Habit.
– Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
