Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously can promote better health, most efforts by companies, health professionals, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective. Brian Wansink’s Marketing Nutrition focuses on why people eat the foods they do, and what can be done to improve their nutrition. Wansink argues that the true challenge in marketing nutrition lies in leveraging new tools of consumer psychology (which he specifically demonstrates) and by applying lessons from other products’ failures and successes. The key problem with marketing nutrition remains, after all, marketing.
I'm a professor whose mission is to help transform people's lives by finding the small changes that make the big difference. Most of my work is around food psychology and changing behavior -- what and how much someone eats.
For the past year, I've had an incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was offered a Presidential appointment to be the Executive Director for USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) -- it's the group in charge of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid). We're doing lots of great things, but I'll return to Cornell as a Professor on January 21st 2009, when the new administration starts. In the meantime, check out MyPyramid.gov.
Okay, now here's the official boring bio:
Brian Wansink (Ph.D. Stanford 1990) is author of the best-selling book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (Bantam 2006) and of Marketing Nutrition (UIllinois Press 2005).
He is the John Dyson Professor of Consumer Behavior at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. Previously, has been a professor of Nutritional science and of Marketing at Dartmouth College, the Vrije Universiteit (The Netherlands), the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, INSEAD (France), and he was a visiting scientist at the U.S. Army Research Labs in Natick, MA.
His award-winning academic research on food psychology and behavior change has been published in the world's top marketing, medical, and nutrition journals. It has been presented, translated, reported, and featured in television documentaries on every continent but Antarctica.
The research findings of he and his colleagues have also contributed to the introduction of smaller '100 calorie' packages (to prevent overeating), the use of taller glasses in some bars (to prevent the overpouring of alcohol), and the use of elaborate names and mouth-watering descriptions on some chain restaurant menus (to improve enjoyment of the food).
An Iowa native, he lives with his family in Ithaca, NY, where he regularly enjoys both French food and french fries.
BRIAN WANSINK
John Dyson Chair of Marketing and of Applied Economics
Director - Cornell Food and Brand Lab
110 Warren Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801
