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 but Antarctica.

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.

He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and he heads the Department of Marketing and of Nutritional Science at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. Prior to Cornell, Dr. Wansink taught at Dartmouth College, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and universities in Europe. In 2008 he served as Executive Director of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, where he oversaw development of the 2010 USDA dietary guidelines and transformed the classic food pyramid into the dynamic and more popular “MyPyramid.”

He is an Iowa native living with his family in Ithaca, NY, where he regularly enjoys both fine French cuisine and fast-food French fries.

Download Dr. Wansink's Curriculum Vitae