Foods Impact our Decisions!
By Sukhbir
Thind
Have you ever thought about how
fast food is affecting your decisions and your productivity! Making decisions
between desert and a healthy snack may be really hard, but one needs to
understand that food affects our productivity and the way we make our
decisions.
Recent studies at California
Institute of Technology suggest that when we make decisions especially when it
comes to food choices, self-control plays a huge factor. Self-control depends
mostly on how our brain incorporates the taste and health related factors. Cal
Tech wanted to design an experiment that integrates taste and when taste
affects our choices. Dr. Sullivan used 28 students and asked them to fast for
four hours. Once these students had fasted for four hours they were asked to
rate 160 different foods on a scale from -2 to 2. The rates were based in 3
factors, healthfulness, tastiness and the participants’ desires to eat it after
their long hours of fasting.
Afterwards the participants had to
pick which food to eat from a pairing system that paired 280 random pictures of
the same food. The experimenters used a new technique that analyzed how the
mouse cursor moved. So a participant can move their curser to an unhealthy food
and then reconsider to a healthy food and click on that or vice versa. Cal Tech
did this to understand and analyze the decision making process and time it
takes for one to choose between taste and healthfulness, and which factor
dominates the decision. According to their research people first choose taste
over healthiness. The time it took for high self controlled participant to
choose healthy was 200 milliseconds. The time it took for low self controlled
participants to choose health was 323 milliseconds.
From this experiment, they also observed
that if one can see the number calories enlarged on the label and see how much
fat is in the food, they are less likely to eat it. Decisions are based on
visuals as well as taste.
Now how do these two relate? When
picking food, time and tastefulness play an important role over healthfulness
for most people. Time plays an important factor when we are making a decision.
When some people are busy and can’t prepare healthy foods, they buy fast foods.
They do not want to wait to make food
and rather will take what comes more “easily” to them. People ignore the fact
about fast foods and desserts being unhealthy. Later these decision come back
to haunt them with health related issues. Another factor is desire, when one
desires the food they are willing to do anything for it. This is a sad reality
that people will do anything for the unhealthy foods at fast foods rather than
eat the healthy vegetables that they can prepare at home because fast foods
“taste” better. Just as the research at Cal Tech suggested that people moved
their cursors to the unhealthy but then reconsidered before they clicked the
unhealthy food. Taste dominated healthfulness. Cal Tech says that before one
eats an unhealthy snack, they should be reminded of the calories and fats that
are in the foods they are about to consume, so they can realize that unhealthy
calories will affect them in the future. Visuals and enlarged labels can play a
big role in preventing people to buy heavily contained calorie food.
So next time you stop at a fast
food restaurant because you “want” fries and a burger, think about all the fats
and oils that food has. Then evaluate all the healthy options you can make at
home from a homemade burger to a fresh Cesar salad. Choices and decisions are
important, but more importantly, making the right ones are the key to success.
References:
Article 1.
Image 1-http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0260/2057/files/boy-making-choice-decision.jpg?7942556593889947105
Image 3- https://static01.nyt.com/images/2011/01/25/business/Label1/Label1-articleLarge.jpg
Image 4- http://exposure-communications.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/foodforthought.jpg
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