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If I eat a snickers bar and afterwards I'm still hungry, I'm not necessarily going to eat another snickers bar. If I eat a very flavorful salad but perhaps am n

If I eat a snickers bar and afterwards I'm still hungry, I'm not necessarily going to eat another snickers bar. If I eat a very flavorful salad but perhaps am not feeling quite satiated, next time I'm not necessarily going to order the competitor's product that is drenched in olive oil. I'm sure there is some truth to these sorts of "survival of the fittest" arguments, but you can only simplify how people reason about food or how they consciously or subconsciously decide what to eat so much before it becomes a parody of itself.

pygy_ 8y ago
So you agree with me, but still want to ridicule my argument ("parody of itself")? I'm also quite surprised to see a statistician use anecdata as arguments. Humans are predictably irrational, there are mountains of scientific evidence on the topic [0, 1]. The industry plays us like fiddles to get us to consume ever more. There are more parameters than the ones I described above (socialization and long term hormonal effects come to mind), but the growth of the food industry is the main driver behind the obesity epidemics. All that food has to be bought, otherwise there's no growth, and investors are not happy and they put their money elsewhere. The easiest way to convince people to buy food is to make them want to eat it. Modern food has been engineered and optimized to be deceptive and take advantage of our instinctive and cognitive biases, in order to get us to eat more than we need to be healthy. 0. https://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/ https://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/ 1. https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Rober...
- DanielleMolloy 8y ago
  For all these market forces that are making profits off addictions it is interesting to see how they manage to get away with it in public perception by addressing personal responsibility - while their products are engineered to induce addictions and diminish will power. I found this study about the tobacco industry's use of the personal responsibility rhetoric: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ Coca Cola and Nutella seem to do a lot of advertising through sports. They are like parasites living off the idea of rationality and personal responsibility that humans need to live a successful, self-determined life. I'm not claiming that personal responsibility is no factor here, but it would be just as wrong (and pretty bad for the affected people's mental health) to assume it is the only one.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    The fantasy that humans have unbridled free will is both pervasive and highly toxic. It conveniently ignores piles of neuropsychological studies on the topic and it is also used to justify "tough on crime" policies that do more harm than good.
pygy_ 8y ago
I'll put it aletrnatively: Since 1) we eat too much and 2) we're not being force-fed, what drives the food down our collective throats? How do you explain the obesity epidemics which is a very recent phenomenon, if not through perverse market forces?
- titanix2 8y ago
  Laziness. Supermarkets still sell raw food (vegetables, meat, etc) that can be used for cooking. But it takes time and effort to do it (+washing) so buying already made but unhealthy dishes is appealing for a lot of people.
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    That explains why we buy ready-made meals, but not why we buy unhealthy rather than healthy ones.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    But why are the ready made meals unhealthy? It’s not because they’re ready made rather than fresh cooked.
    - HappyRobot 8y ago
      Ready made meals are usually higher in sodium and fats than fresh cooked meals. Edit - https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/supermarket-prepared-meals-what-to-watch-out-for/ https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/supermarket-pr... The article doesn't call out higher amounts of fat in prepared food, but does mention higher cost and added preservatives.
    - leetcrew 8y ago
      I don't know the exact reasons why, but food made in large batches tends to be less tasty than food made in smaller batches at home. if the food is made in large batches and it's not fresh, it takes another "tastiness" penalty. adding excessive fat and/or salt is an easy hack to make ready made meals a bit more palatable. I suspect it would be very difficult (ie expensive) to make ready made meals anywhere near as appealing as home cooked without using these tricks.
Spooky23 8y ago
Sure you are. Are you buying an individual snickers bar or a 5 lb bag of Mars, Inc confections? Also, the use case and marketing strategy for your two scenarios are different. A product like Snickers is a quick on-the-go fix of food. The marketing connection for a salad is different -- the money and full feeling is in the dressing. Many people translate "salad" as leaves with goops of fat/sugar on them. If you are a oil/vinegar person, you're an awful customer for Kraft. The food industry is attacking traditional, lower margin foods to make more $. The best example is the push against milk in favor of nut and grain based white liquid. All of the substitute products are mostly water and corn syrup, but are sold at dairy prices.
- molloy 8y ago
  A lot of plant milks are unsweetened, and there is a high and growing demand for these products—yes these companies want to make money, but it's not as if they were manufacturing the demand, they're merely capitalizing upon it. Better yet is to make one's own oat milk; I agree that they're exorbitantly expensive, albeit (here in the US) the dairy industry is immensely subsidized and so we consumers don't see the true cost of our cow's milk.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Subsidies for milk benefit processors, not producers. Producers today are going bankrupt left and right as they are forced to sell at fixed prices unless they go direct to consumer. It's all the same problem. Allowing a cartel of dairy processors to control to production and delivery of dairy products is equivalent to allowing a cartel of producers (in the case of almonds) and big food is the same. All benefit from extensive subsidy (that corn syrup isn't market-based), with the added risk of food security issues, especially for nut milks that are exclusively sourced from a few counties in California.
    - molloy 8y ago
      Oh, I was bringing up the price in comparison to the price of plant milks from a consumer's standpoint—while plant milks seemingly have a high markup from raw materials to product (transportation and storage costs aside), our perception of what makes it expensive has an unrealistic anchor in the subsidized cost of cow's milk. Paying $12 for a gallon of cow's milk vs. $5 for a gallon of oat milk changes the picture a bit.
dfgert 8y ago
When a person is struggling to even pay his bills, which most of the Americans are, then tactics like these from food companies does have lots on influence on what such people decides to eat.
ABCLAW 8y ago
Maybe not in the individual instance, but in the aggregate, sure you will. Humans eat foods that reward them, because that's how dopamine works. We've figured out how to optimize the rewards, too: Salt. Fat. Sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

pygy_ 8y ago

So you agree with me, but still want to ridicule my argument ("parody of itself")? I'm also quite surprised to see a statistician use anecdata as arguments. Humans are predictably irrational, there are mountains of scientific evidence on the topic [0, 1]. The industry plays us like fiddles to get us to consume ever more. There are more parameters than the ones I described above (socialization and long term hormonal effects come to mind), but the growth of the food industry is the main driver behind the obesity epidemics. All that food has to be bought, otherwise there's no growth, and investors are not happy and they put their money elsewhere. The easiest way to convince people to buy food is to make them want to eat it. Modern food has been engineered and optimized to be deceptive and take advantage of our instinctive and cognitive biases, in order to get us to eat more than we need to be healthy. 0. https://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/ https://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/ 1. https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Rober...

DanielleMolloy 8y ago
For all these market forces that are making profits off addictions it is interesting to see how they manage to get away with it in public perception by addressing personal responsibility - while their products are engineered to induce addictions and diminish will power. I found this study about the tobacco industry's use of the personal responsibility rhetoric: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ Coca Cola and Nutella seem to do a lot of advertising through sports. They are like parasites living off the idea of rationality and personal responsibility that humans need to live a successful, self-determined life. I'm not claiming that personal responsibility is no factor here, but it would be just as wrong (and pretty bad for the affected people's mental health) to assume it is the only one.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pygy_ 8y ago
  The fantasy that humans have unbridled free will is both pervasive and highly toxic. It conveniently ignores piles of neuropsychological studies on the topic and it is also used to justify "tough on crime" policies that do more harm than good.

pygy_ 8y ago

I'll put it aletrnatively: Since 1) we eat too much and 2) we're not being force-fed, what drives the food down our collective throats? How do you explain the obesity epidemics which is a very recent phenomenon, if not through perverse market forces?

titanix2 8y ago
Laziness. Supermarkets still sell raw food (vegetables, meat, etc) that can be used for cooking. But it takes time and effort to do it (+washing) so buying already made but unhealthy dishes is appealing for a lot of people.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  That explains why we buy ready-made meals, but not why we buy unhealthy rather than healthy ones.
- rayiner 8y ago
  But why are the ready made meals unhealthy? It’s not because they’re ready made rather than fresh cooked.
  - HappyRobot 8y ago
    Ready made meals are usually higher in sodium and fats than fresh cooked meals. Edit - https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/supermarket-prepared-meals-what-to-watch-out-for/ https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/supermarket-pr... The article doesn't call out higher amounts of fat in prepared food, but does mention higher cost and added preservatives.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    I don't know the exact reasons why, but food made in large batches tends to be less tasty than food made in smaller batches at home. if the food is made in large batches and it's not fresh, it takes another "tastiness" penalty. adding excessive fat and/or salt is an easy hack to make ready made meals a bit more palatable. I suspect it would be very difficult (ie expensive) to make ready made meals anywhere near as appealing as home cooked without using these tricks.

Spooky23 8y ago

Sure you are. Are you buying an individual snickers bar or a 5 lb bag of Mars, Inc confections? Also, the use case and marketing strategy for your two scenarios are different. A product like Snickers is a quick on-the-go fix of food. The marketing connection for a salad is different -- the money and full feeling is in the dressing. Many people translate "salad" as leaves with goops of fat/sugar on them. If you are a oil/vinegar person, you're an awful customer for Kraft. The food industry is attacking traditional, lower margin foods to make more $. The best example is the push against milk in favor of nut and grain based white liquid. All of the substitute products are mostly water and corn syrup, but are sold at dairy prices.

molloy 8y ago
A lot of plant milks are unsweetened, and there is a high and growing demand for these products—yes these companies want to make money, but it's not as if they were manufacturing the demand, they're merely capitalizing upon it. Better yet is to make one's own oat milk; I agree that they're exorbitantly expensive, albeit (here in the US) the dairy industry is immensely subsidized and so we consumers don't see the true cost of our cow's milk.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Subsidies for milk benefit processors, not producers. Producers today are going bankrupt left and right as they are forced to sell at fixed prices unless they go direct to consumer. It's all the same problem. Allowing a cartel of dairy processors to control to production and delivery of dairy products is equivalent to allowing a cartel of producers (in the case of almonds) and big food is the same. All benefit from extensive subsidy (that corn syrup isn't market-based), with the added risk of food security issues, especially for nut milks that are exclusively sourced from a few counties in California.
  - molloy 8y ago
    Oh, I was bringing up the price in comparison to the price of plant milks from a consumer's standpoint—while plant milks seemingly have a high markup from raw materials to product (transportation and storage costs aside), our perception of what makes it expensive has an unrealistic anchor in the subsidized cost of cow's milk. Paying $12 for a gallon of cow's milk vs. $5 for a gallon of oat milk changes the picture a bit.

dfgert 8y ago

When a person is struggling to even pay his bills, which most of the Americans are, then tactics like these from food companies does have lots on influence on what such people decides to eat.

ABCLAW 8y ago

Maybe not in the individual instance, but in the aggregate, sure you will. Humans eat foods that reward them, because that's how dopamine works. We've figured out how to optimize the rewards, too: Salt. Fat. Sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)