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Welcome back to the second part of our special Best of Thanksgiving edition of Science Talk, the weekly Scientific American podcast. I'm Steve Murski. In part two, we'll hear from Brian Wansink.

He's the director of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University, where he's also a professor

in the Applied Economics and Management Department, and he's the author of Mindless Eating,

which is probably going on perhaps right now

in your home, why we eat more than we think. I spoke to him at the Cornell store on the campus

in Ithaca, New York, for a program that originally aired on June 20th, 2007. Hi, Dr. Wan-Sink,

how are you? What's great to be with you, Steve. Great to talk to you.

So mindless eating.

It sounds kind of obvious, but what is mindless eating?

One thing we find is that if you ask a typical person how many food-related decisions

a day they end up making, most people will say, well, 30 or so.

In reality, we find that typical person makes between 200 and 300 decisions a day

about food. Because it's not whether you're going to eat shirios or fruit loops. It's whether you're going to have half a bowl, a full bowl, or a second bowl. It's whether you're going to add sugar, whether you're going to put a banana on it, whether you're going to add skim milk or whole milk, how much milk, and bam, before you even know it.

You've made 20 decisions before you even know it.

You've made 20 decisions you even had a bite to eat.

That's mindless eating is making these decisions,

...