The psychology (and economics and marketing) of overeating

While we recover from holiday #1, Salon.com's Katharine Mieszkowski interviews Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, about the psychology of overeating, and they come up with some economic and marketing insights. Since the observations that you'll eat more from a larger plate (or a larger bag of chips) and that labeling a fast-food item "healthy" is the "kiss of death" are a bit old hat, this one was our favorite:

We did a survey of over 1,000 people, and 40 percent of their favorite comfort foods ended up being things that are reasonably healthy for you—meal-related foods, like soup, pasta, steak, casseroles—as opposed to candy, cakes, chips and ice cream. But one thing is that men tend to prefer those meal foods. ... They said: "When I eat meal-related foods, I really feel cared for, I feel like I'm important, I feel like I'm the center of attention." And when we asked women about those same foods, women said: "Yeah, we like them, they just don't really give us that much comfort, because when we think of these foods we think of the fact that we're probably going to have to make them, we're probably going to have to clean up after them."

And so women prefer pre-made snack foods.

Thanks to Glenn Wright for the link.
Technorati Tags: women's work, overeating, marketing