Food expert Brian Wansink offers to help local restaurants
Mindless Eating author Brian Wansink at Eat At Joe's helping launch Vitality City last December. Photo
Wansink, the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, conducted a study in which 54 participants were invited – in groups of four – to have soup for lunch. The 18 ounce soup bowls were different colors and a pre-lunch questionnaire asked color-related questions – basically, to throw the people off the trail.
The real point of the study was that two of the four bowls were attached to tubes beneath the table that nearly imperceptibly kept refilling the soup. The diners eating from these bowls unconsciously adjusted – they kept eating, keeping up with their counterparts eating from normal bowls, and in the course of the meal ate an average of 73 percent more soup.
Perhaps even more significantly, afterwards they didn’t report being any more sated, or full, than those who ate from non-refilling bowls. They ate as much with their eyes, in other words, as they did with their stomachs.
Wansink, who will visit Redondo Beachand Manhattan Beachon Thursday as part of the VitalityCitypublic health initiative, estimates that we all make roughly 250 decisions regarding food each day. And as the title of his book Mindless Eating indicates, we don’t make those decisions consciously. People’s food decisions, he contends, are in a large part determined by environmental cues.
“Most of us don’t overeat because we’re hungry,” Wansink said. “We overeat because of family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers.”
Wansink is one of the “A Team” of national experts who are taking part in Vitality City, a three-year project that aims to change the beach cities’ environment in ways large and small to “nudge” people into more healthful habits and in so doing create a national model. The project, which is headed by the Beach Cities Health District and Healthways, was actually launched last December when Wansink visitedRedondo Beach’s famed Eat At Joe’s diner.
Since Americans eat out an average of 4.2 times per week, restaurants are a key part of theVitality City program. Wansick is offering three free training sessions this Thursday in which he promises to show restaurants how to both create healthier options and more profit.
“It’s a win-win,” Wansink said. “We show restaurants how they can help their customers eat better, and make more money.”
Eat At Joe’s was among the first local restaurants to take theVitality City “pledge.” Owner Alex Jordan said that several of the changes Wansink helped him make have been extremely successful. The restaurant famous for its signature John Wayne omelet – two eggs smothered in cheese, surrounded by sausages, atop a bed of home fries – now offers half-sized portions of many dishes and fruit and salads as sides instead of French fries.
Jordan said two of Joe’s newly emphasized “healthier” menu dishes, a sautéed vegetable and rice bowl called “The Michele” and a turkey or chicken breakfast burrito, are now among the most popular items among customers.
“We had a healthier menu before, but we’ve kind of expanded it and made it more prominent,”Jordansaid. “We try to make it easier to make healthier good choices, like ground turkey instead of ground beef, or egg whites instead of eggs. People seem to like it and it has made money, so it covers all the bases.”
Eat At Joes, of course, is famous for its large portions, andJordan said he isn’t abandoning his core business exemplified by the John Wayne. But now more and more people are “softening the blow” by ordering the John Wayne with egg whites, or tomato slices, and many seniors are taking a particular liking to the smaller and cheaper half-sized portions on offer.
Jordon said offering more, and healthier, choices has both attracted new customers and changed the habits of many regulars.
“It’s just about more choices,”Jordansaid. “Coming to Joe’s is kind of like coming to my house for breakfast or lunch. If you don’t like something, I’ll go back to my refrigerator and find something you do like.”
Wansink will be presenting his seminars at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. July 28 at the Manhattan Beach Police and Fire Community Room, 1500 Highland Ave., MB, and at 7 p.m. at the BCHD Beach Cities Room at 514 N. Prospect, Redondo Beach. For more info or to make a reservation call 888-666-0023 or visit www.vitalitycity.com .