About 50 food studies take place at any one time in Cornell University's food lab. Some of Brian Wansink's studies – critics call them "Happy Meal" studies – take place in the field. Regardless of location, all of Wansink's experiments yield interesting findings about how our subconscious influences what, and how, we eat. Check out these fun facts.

• Give a group of people at a bar the Super Bowl and a plate of chicken wings, and the subjects will eat 28 percent more when a waitress clears the bones from the table than when the bones pile up.

• You'll eat more M&Ms if they're available in 10 colors than if they come in seven because you'll crave the variety.

• Flowers at your table will make you eat more, even though the smell may clash with the smell of your meal.

• Use small plates, keep junk food in inconvenient places, avoid eating directly from a package, and be the last one at your table to start eating. You'll fare better nutritionally by practicing these healthy habits.
  
  

For more wacky food scoop, check out Wansink's book: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

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I just caught my kids eating mindlessly. Perched in front of the TV, watching a favorite movie treat -- Monsters Inc. -- my guys were shoveling in the food. Fortunately, sitting before them were bowls of fruit. Apples, pears, and cherries are what their little fingers grabbed and their little teeth chewed. Yes, it was nothing but healthy stuff passing through the lips of my boys. They devoured the contents of their Spider-man bowls. Nothing better than that.

Eating mindlessly is not such a bad endeavor if the food you eat is both healthy and portion-controlled. But for most foods -- well, the foods full of calories, fats, sugars, and such -- you really should be mindful of what you eat. I know: It's not that easy.

"We believe we have all the free will in the world," says Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating and head of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab. "We believe we overeat if the food is good or if we're really hungry. In reality, those are two of the last things that determine how much we eat." What really influences our eating, according to Wansink, are visibility and convenience.

So what's the solution? Try to avoid "family style" eating with big serving bowls on the table. Don't eat directly from a bag or carton. Ditch your big plates and big containers and come up with some streamlined options. And try not to eat in the car, with friends, or in front of the television -- unless of course, you are consuming moderate portions of fresh fruit.

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TV and obesity go hand in hand, there's no doubt about that. But are some shows worse than others when it comes to eating more and gaining weight? That is actually true, according to recent research. At first my thought was that boring TV, like when you're just surfing around because there's nothing better to do, leads to more mindless snacking, but that's not the case at all. The more entertaining the show, the more people eat.

It has to do with being distracted, and when you're distracted by that awesome movie, you pay less attention to your body's signals telling you you're full and have had enough. You just keep on eating, happy and oblivious.

Wow, that sucks!

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