Brian Wansink, a Cornell food psychologist runs Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab, devoted to studying how our physical surroundings—everything from supermarket layout to food packaging to the color of your kitchen walls—affect what and how we eat.
If we really want to eat better, Wansink explains, we have to trick our brains into making the right choices.
As for his personal choices, Wansink considers organic food a waste of money, drinks six diet sodas daily, and takes his kids to McDonald’s after church on Sundays.
A lifelong libertarian, he also opposes soda taxes and laws that require fast-food restaurants to post nutritional information. He considers such tactics elitist, and he hates nothing more than elitism. You might think of him as the anti-Alice Waters.
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But if he doesn’t fit in with the reigning class of foodie intellectuals, he has developed a reputation as a lovable provocateur. The New York Times called Wansink’s work “brilliantly mischievous.” New York University nutrition professor and author Marion Nestle publicly disagrees with his stance that government can’t fix the obesity epidemic—but assigns his books to her students anyway. Food journalist Mark Bittman has debated him on whether healthy eating is a matter of conscious choice (Bittman’s belief) or responses to environmental cues (Wansink’s), but the two are buddies. When Bittman came to visit Ithaca in 2013, he had dinner chez Wansink.
Read full, original article: This Fast-Food-Loving, Organics-Hating Ivy League Prof Will Trick You Into Eating Better
