Experts

Dr. Brian Wansink

Brian Wansink, Ph.D.
Cornell Food and Brand Lab

Dr. Brian Wansink is the world’s leading expert in eating behavior. Known as the “Sherlock Holmes of Food,” his award-winning research results have been published in hundreds of academic, medical, nutrition, marketing, and popular articles, and his work has been featured in documentaries and television shows on every continent with the exception of Antarctica. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and he heads the department of marketing and nutritional science at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

Dr. Wansink’s findings have been both revolutionary and diverse. He is perhaps best known for discovering what he calls, “Mindless Eating,“ the tendency to eat because of habit or environmental cues rather than hunger, and for originating the concept of the 100 calorie snack pack. His contributions to current thinking also include advances in food marketing, study design, consumer behavior, and other fields. Dr. Wansink authored the bestselling book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think in 2006.

Dr. Wansink founded the Food and Brand Lab in 1997 at the University of Illinois and the Consumer Education Foundation in 1999. In 2005, he moved both to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Since 2006, Dr. Wansink has written a monthly column on food behavior for MSNBC.com entitled Chew on This. In July 2007, Dr. Wansink joined Prevention.com as one of its two nutrition columnists, writing the column Food Think with Wansink.

From 2007-2009, Dr. Wansink was presidentially appointed as executive director of the USDA Dietary Guidelines.

Dr. Wansink is an Iowa native living with his family in Ithaca, New York.

Visit Dr. Wansink's "Tips for Avoiding “Mindless Eating”

Dr. Brian Wansink has joined the California Walnut Commission, Dr. Michael Roizen, cookbook author Mollie Katzen and fitness expert Petra Kolber in leading a nationwide quest to find THE Original Health Nut. They are searching high and low to find the person in America who lives each day to the fullest and goes the extra mile – someone who leads by example and inspires others to make healthy decisions in their everyday choices. Visit www.originalhealthnut.org to learn more.