This episode is presented by eBay.

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Then when you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. There's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else. Then when you're selling, it's so simple and most

importantly, free. It's free, Rob. When it's this easy to sell for free and there's great deals

on things you love. You can't help but say when it's eBay. It excludes vehicles and business

sellers.

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 Wonsink. 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? It'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. whether you're going to add sugar, whether you're going to put a banana on it, 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 you even had even had a bite to eat that's mindless eating is making these decisions but not even realizing you're being influenced by the things around you. That number is just a big surprise.

There's a lot of that number, I'm not going to eat that?

Yeah, I mean, part of it is that if you have a candy dish in your desk, every time you look at that candy dish, you have to say,

do I want that piece of candy or do I not want it?

I see. So if you've got M&Ms, that could be 200 decisions a day.

Well, that's right. And the first 25 decisions might be no, no, no, no, no. But decision number 26 might be

maybe. And by the time you get to decision 30, it's, yep, I deserve it.

Your studies, we've covered a couple of your studies in the magazine

and on the podcast there was the study about the size and shape of drinking glasses and how that

fools people into thinking they've had a certain volume of a liquid when they've had more.

And the other study I remember was the chicken wing,

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