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A review by thedarkfields
Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life by Brian Wansink
1.0
**EDIT:** After learning more about the author, his unethical research tweaking, and his fall from grace (to put it nicely), I've dropped this down to 1 star.
He abused vague data to build the results he wanted and published many multiple papers off of the same data set (sketchy af). Most of his insights in this book are based on invalid research (meaning it's unknown if true or not) and some have been specifically disproven. Of the 150 or whatever papers he published, something like 84 were examined by a specific group of third-party universities/researchers and over 50 of those were shown to be based on faulty research or flat out made up. Sometimes the basic math didn't add up, or the numbers provided were important to obtain within the criteria.
Basically, the dude was widely discredited and everything in this book is questionable. Even things that seem obvious (eg, eating a lower calorie food is inherently better if all else is equal) turn out to be more complicated than assumed (ie, if the person knows it's lower calorie, they tend to eat more of the item, resulting in higher total caloric intake) when scrutinized by effective research conducted properly.
tldr: Don't read this. It's basically made up. In its place, I recommend "Diet Cults" or "Sugar Salt and Fat" (yes, that's the correct title; no, it's not the Netflix documentary one).
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Caveat: I'm struggling to get through this book, so I'm judging based off of only a couple chapters.
Calling this book painfully outdated is extremely generous; I'm adding a star because I think the author had good intentions and some of the advice included is legitimately backed by research.
So far as I am in the book, there are some seemingly good studies referenced, but the author often takes one study (sometimes of only a relatively small group) and presents it as concrete evidence with no explanation or recognition of separating causation from correlation. For example, sure, choosing 100 calorie packs over full-size bags can help with portion control during episodes of mindless eating.. but I finished a more recent and more thoroughly researched book not long ago that included data -- grossly summarized here -- on how the same people who bought those 100 calorie packs ended up purchasing and consuming a larger amount of those unhealthy products (eg, chips or crackers) than they had been previously. They didn't have data on why that was and didn't speculate much, but it demonstrates that this author's assumptions and oversimplifications are insufficient to be making the conjectures that have filled these chapters so far. There's also much comparison between people who have always been thin ("normal people") versus those who have been overweight or obese for some time ("fat people") with no regard for the extensive research (even at that time) showing how much more difficult it is to lose weight once gained versus remaining a consistent weight all along (eg, a formerly obese person would have to eat considerably less calories to maintain -- after already losing that fat -- an identical weight than a never-obese person could eat).
The book's entire premise, from asking restaurants to change their business model to accommodate you (because they'll allegedly make more money) to why designing your environment is superior to using will power like The Biggest Loser is, well, naive at best. Maybe that was the best information that was available at the time (although that still doesn't really justify the leaps from single study to guaranteed-to-be-successful practices).
Again, I'm only a couple chapters in, but I'm having a rough go of it. There's been zero mention or consideration thus far of: the emotional and psychological roles of trauma/etc in overeating, genetic differences (small though they seem to be), obviously the microbiome (definitely too old of a book), effects of various characteristics on efficacy of calorie absorption, and so on. There's also a very direct and undiscussed assumption that your goal is to lose fat (regardless of health), that it's solely your fault (will power is hard! don't worry about nutrition, other than eating salad first!), and that all fat people engage in the same "bad" habits, which are the opposite of those of skinny people.
Just don't read it. There are so many better books on the topic out there with much more accurate research. If Freakonomics Radio is any indication, it seems like the author's moved on to bigger and better things anyway; that is, he doesn't need the support of the book sales. Everyone wins.
He abused vague data to build the results he wanted and published many multiple papers off of the same data set (sketchy af). Most of his insights in this book are based on invalid research (meaning it's unknown if true or not) and some have been specifically disproven. Of the 150 or whatever papers he published, something like 84 were examined by a specific group of third-party universities/researchers and over 50 of those were shown to be based on faulty research or flat out made up. Sometimes the basic math didn't add up, or the numbers provided were important to obtain within the criteria.
Basically, the dude was widely discredited and everything in this book is questionable. Even things that seem obvious (eg, eating a lower calorie food is inherently better if all else is equal) turn out to be more complicated than assumed (ie, if the person knows it's lower calorie, they tend to eat more of the item, resulting in higher total caloric intake) when scrutinized by effective research conducted properly.
tldr: Don't read this. It's basically made up. In its place, I recommend "Diet Cults" or "Sugar Salt and Fat" (yes, that's the correct title; no, it's not the Netflix documentary one).
-----
Caveat: I'm struggling to get through this book, so I'm judging based off of only a couple chapters.
Calling this book painfully outdated is extremely generous; I'm adding a star because I think the author had good intentions and some of the advice included is legitimately backed by research.
So far as I am in the book, there are some seemingly good studies referenced, but the author often takes one study (sometimes of only a relatively small group) and presents it as concrete evidence with no explanation or recognition of separating causation from correlation. For example, sure, choosing 100 calorie packs over full-size bags can help with portion control during episodes of mindless eating.. but I finished a more recent and more thoroughly researched book not long ago that included data -- grossly summarized here -- on how the same people who bought those 100 calorie packs ended up purchasing and consuming a larger amount of those unhealthy products (eg, chips or crackers) than they had been previously. They didn't have data on why that was and didn't speculate much, but it demonstrates that this author's assumptions and oversimplifications are insufficient to be making the conjectures that have filled these chapters so far. There's also much comparison between people who have always been thin ("normal people") versus those who have been overweight or obese for some time ("fat people") with no regard for the extensive research (even at that time) showing how much more difficult it is to lose weight once gained versus remaining a consistent weight all along (eg, a formerly obese person would have to eat considerably less calories to maintain -- after already losing that fat -- an identical weight than a never-obese person could eat).
The book's entire premise, from asking restaurants to change their business model to accommodate you (because they'll allegedly make more money) to why designing your environment is superior to using will power like The Biggest Loser is, well, naive at best. Maybe that was the best information that was available at the time (although that still doesn't really justify the leaps from single study to guaranteed-to-be-successful practices).
Again, I'm only a couple chapters in, but I'm having a rough go of it. There's been zero mention or consideration thus far of: the emotional and psychological roles of trauma/etc in overeating, genetic differences (small though they seem to be), obviously the microbiome (definitely too old of a book), effects of various characteristics on efficacy of calorie absorption, and so on. There's also a very direct and undiscussed assumption that your goal is to lose fat (regardless of health), that it's solely your fault (will power is hard! don't worry about nutrition, other than eating salad first!), and that all fat people engage in the same "bad" habits, which are the opposite of those of skinny people.
Just don't read it. There are so many better books on the topic out there with much more accurate research. If Freakonomics Radio is any indication, it seems like the author's moved on to bigger and better things anyway; that is, he doesn't need the support of the book sales. Everyone wins.