As Mullainathan notes, “dieting can make you dumber. Understanding why this is the case can illuminate a range of experiences, including something as far removed from voluntary calorie restriction as...

As Mullainathan notes, “dieting can make you dumber. Understanding why this is the case can illuminate a range of experiences, including something as far removed from voluntary calorie restriction as the ordeal of outright poverty” (par. 1). He shows how dieting impedes you from successfully completing mental tasks and therefore has “psychological, not just physiological, effects” (par. 6). Before you read this essay, did you believe that diets have psychological effects? Did reading about dieting stresses help you understand how bandwidth scarcity affects people who have too little money as well as too few calories? Choosing dieting as a primary example suggests that more readers will identify with dieting than other examples. Do you think this is true? Why or why not? Mullainathan also reports that diets with fewer rules are more successful (par. 15). Do you think this is true of all successful diets, or does it depend on the individual dieter? If the latter, does Mullainathan’s example still work to explain the effects of bandwidth scarcity?