Jesus: A Mindless Eater?

Holy portion sizes!

Cornell professor Brian Wansink of "Mindless Eating" fame has collaborated with his brother, Craig, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, to direct and publish a study in next month's International Journal of Obesity. They found that by closely studying paintings of The Last Supper throughout the ages, you can see that Jesus and his disciples' "entree sizes grew by 69 percent over the past millennium. Average bread-size grew too -- by about 23 percent."

"In the Gospels themselves when they describe this meal, they only describe bread and wine as being present," Craig Wansink ... So, it was up to the individual artists to decide what else might have been served, and sizes.

The paintings were analyzed with a computer program that scanned the depicted food items and calculated their dimensions. To account for varying sizes of the paintings and their foods , the size of bread loaves and main dishes was indexed based on the average head size of the people around the table -- or what the researchers call the "Bread-to-Head" ratio (and, of course, the "Main-Dish-by-head" ratio, too).

"The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," said Brian Wansink, "We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner."

(Source: NPR and NYT)

Round 2 / Day 42: Insanity Pure Cardio + Cardio Abs

Holy hell. Diving headlong into Cardio Abs immediately after the craziness of Pure Cardio isn't the easiest way to start the day.

Afterwards, I wanted to eat everything in sight. I downed a banana, a few heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter and fistfuls of almonds -- and then I saw this on my laptop screen: An article in the L.A. Times discussing the tendency to overeat after intense exercise (a.k.a., "the post-workout binge").

While compensation can be triggered by particularly intense workouts, in most people it appears to be driven by a misunderstanding of how many calories a workout actually burns, [Louisiana State University professor Timothy] Church says. "People greatly overestimate how many calories they've burned," he says. "Forty-five minutes to an hour on a treadmill only burns 450 calories. You can neutralize it with one coffee and muffin at Starbucks or two glasses of wine that night." But the desire to compensate is also physiological, says Church. "No doubt the body wants to replenish," particularly after a grueling exercise routine.

The widespread availability of calorie-dense, carbohydrate-heavy foods complicates the problem, says Leslie Bonci, director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Many people crave carbohydrates after a workout but, to a degree, that "taste" has been engineered by the marketing of energy bars and drinks packed with sugar, she says. "We've been conditioned, like Pavlov's dogs," says Bonci. "I don't know anyone who really craves a salad after working out."

And there's yet another complicating factor, says Brian Wansink, professor of consumer behavior and director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Many people will choose low-fat or low-sugar foods in order to adhere to an exercise or diet routine, but then allow themselves to eat more as a reward for choosing such foods, Wansink says.

What a fucking buzzkill.

Portion Control

As I was flipping through M's copy of the latest issue of Cooking Light, I came across a short article about Brian Wansink (of "Mindless Eating" fame) and his quest to bring portion awareness to the masses.  Included in the piece are ten useful tips to help us avoid unknowingly stuffing ourselves.  They pretty much encapsulate the entirety of Wansink's book, so I thought I'd summarize them here for those of you who hate having to read anything longer than a blog post:

• Before eating, divide the plate.  To ensure a properly balanced meal, fill one half of your plate with fruits or vegetables.  Divide the remaining half equally between protein and starch/carbs.
• Pre-portion tempting treats.  In other words, don't eat out of the bag or box; portion out the amount you're supposed to eat and set it aside, and put away the container before you turn off your brain and start popping stuff in your mouth.
• Head off the mindless munch.  Have your restaurant server take away the basket of bread before you mindlessly down the contents.  
• Downsize your dishes.  Dinner plates are enormous compared to the ones used by our parents and grandparents.  Trade them for smaller ones, or you'll end up overloading them with food (and eating all of it) just so your plates don't look so bare.
• Limit your choices.  We tend to overeat if given more choices.  Implement a no-buffet rule.
• Use your power for good.  The person in your household who buys and prepares food is a "nutritional gatekeeper" who dictates the healthfulness of family meals and snacks.  If that's you, wield this power responsibly.
• Avoid a "see-food" diet.  Keep unhealthy snacks out of sight, and you'll be less likely to munch on them.  Remember: Candy dishes are evil.
• Turn off the television.  There's a direct correlation between time spent in front of the boob tube and amount of food that goes down your throat.  Before you know it, that shitty episode of "CSI: Miami" is over and your bag of Cheetos is empty, leaving you with fluorescent artificial cheese flavoring smeared all over your gaping mouth.  
• Think before you drink.  Remember to choose zero-calorie beverages like water or tea.  But when you do sip on something with calories (I'm talking juice, not soda), keep in mind that we're horrible at judging volumes and tend to drink more when using short, wide glasses.
• Serve good-for-you foods family style.  Don't go family style when it comes to less-than-healthy foods -- we tend to pig out when a big-ass platter of deep fried anything is placed in front of us.  But salads and vegetable sides can be an all-you-can-eat affair.

There.  I just saved you the cost of a paperback.

Check It Out: Mindless Eating

In "Mindless Eating," food psychologist Brian Wansink discusses why many people don't realize how much they're eating, what they're eating, or even why they're eating. Along with thoughtful discussions of studies he's done as director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab, their results and real-world applications, Wansink sprinkles his book with nuggets of wisdom for those of us who clutch Costco-sized bags of chips as we hunch, zombie-like, in front of the television.


After pointing out that our environment significantly influences our propensity for overeating, one of Wansink's suggestions is to create "distraction-free eating scripts":

Rescript your diet danger zones. We all have various eating scripts for the five most common diet danger zones -- dinners, snacks, parties, restaurants, desks/dashboards. A common dinner script -- particularly for men -- involves eating second helpings of most foods until everyone at the table is finished or until the food is gone. If such a man wanted to rescript his dinner, he might try being the last one to start eating, pacing himself with his spouse, serving triple helpings of the healthy foods and single heapings of the meat and potatoes, or not including bread. Similarly, after-work snacking could be rescripted with a stick of gum rather than whatever is in the refrigerator.

Distract yourself before you snack. Distractions are good news and bad news. They are goo when they prevent us from starting to snack. they are bad when they prevent us from stopping. at home, you can make your snacking life less distracting and less alluring by eating in one room only, such as the dining room or kitchen.

Serve yourself before you start. If you can't distract yourself from a yummy snack, you can minimize the damage it does in a distracting situation (such as eating in front of the TV). To avoid "eating until it's over," dish yourself out a ration before you start. Eating straight from a box, bag, or serving bowl is the recipe for regret.

I've found the last suggestion above to be particularly helpful. I used to eat handfuls of nuts (they're healthy! I told myself) straight from the container while staring at the television at home or computer screen at work. Since I started on the P90X Nutrition Plan, however, I've been diligently counting out a snack-sized portion of almonds (15 nuts = 100 calories) rather than taking the free-for-all approach. And surprisingly, this tiny handful of almonds actually satisfies me -- at least until my next feeding.