PAREN TS FIG H TS FAT
PART ;
TEA C H
HEALTHY
E ATING
AT HOME
henever I take out my good china, I think of
Brian Wansink, Ph.D. Three years ago, I tagged
along on some research he was doing at Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, to see whether women would
eat more lunch if it were served on a fancy plate rather than
on a cheap plain one. I joked that if his theory panned out (it
did), I should put all of my daughter’s vegetables on Lenox.
But Dr. Wansink, author of more than 300 research papers
and the best seller Mindless Eating, takes eating behavior
W
very seriously. “I think children are influenced by how their
food is presented just as much as adults are,” he said.
“I just don’t have the studies to support it yet.”
Now, after doing research in preschools and summer
camps, he has come up with a bunch of subtle ways to get
kids to eat more healthy foods and fewer junky ones—which
is one of the keys to preventing childhood obesity. He invited me back to hear all the details, this time over dinner at
his home with his wife, Jennifer, and their two girls, Audrey,
