How do people decide what and how much they will eat? And how do they decide about when and where to eat? We tend to think that most people make deliberate decisions about the foods they consume; and that they review all the
food options that are available to them: will I have a burger for lunch or do I feel
more like eating a salad? Will I buy chicken for dinner or shall we have a
vegetarian dish tonight? While it may seem obvious that we think a lot about
what foods we buy or consume, the reality is that most food decisions are not
made in this way. Rather the opposite. People do not think so much about what
and how much they will eat, nor do they plan when and where to eat most of the
time. Food decisions are mostly made in a mindless way, without paying much
attention to what kinds of food we purchase or consume. In a classic study
American psychologist Brian Wansink showed that people make about 200 food
decisions a day, but that the majority of these decisions are not experienced as
such. When people make decisions about what they will have for breakfast, lunch
or dinner, about the snacks in between meals, or whether they will have a second
serving, they just act without much thinking.
To understand why this is the case, we must know a bit more about how people
tend to make decisions in general. In the past decades, studies in psychological
science have demonstrated that our behaviour - including the way we make
decisions - is governed by two types of reasoning systems. Nobel prize laureate
Daniel Kahneman has coined these systems System 1 and System 2. System 1 is
the term that is used for behaviour that is fast and automatic, which means that
we engage in this type of behaviour without thinking - driven by impulse,
emotion, or routines. System 2 is the term that is used for behaviour that is slow
and reflective, which implicates that we engage in this behaviour while
considering the pros and cons and consciously review all the options available.
While most people tend to believe that they operate in a System 2 way of
thinking most of the time, acting as rational individuals and carefully considering
the best options available to them, it has now become clear that the majority of
behaviour, including decision making about food, is regulated by System 1. This
means that we make decisions about food based on impulse, emotion or routine
or – as Brian Wansink would put it – in a mindless way.
To better understand the nature of food decisions, we must take one further step
and make a distinction between two types of mindless decisions. As alluded to
previously, mindless, or System 1 decisions, are automatic in the sense that
people don’t think a lot about them, which may result either from acting on
impulse or from acting on habits. To what extent are food decisions mindless in
the sense that they are impulsive and to what extent are these decisions
mindless in terms of routines or habits? Some scientists have argued that food
decisions are primarily driven by the expectation of reward from food and thus
made on impulse. Because food is important for survival, they argue, the
biological make up of humans makes eating a pleasurable activity. This would
mean that because people love food so much (especially the unhealthy kind of
food that is rich in sugar, salt and fat) they have a hard time resisting food
whenever it is available. Recently, however, it has become clear that even while
people like food very much, many food decisions are not impulsive. While we
may eventually fall for a tempting offer of chocolate cake that is offered by a
friend at a birthday party., Eeven if we planned not to do so, the majority of food
decisions is not driven by such impulsive acts. Rather food decisions are steered
by the other component of System 1 processing, the routine part. The concept of
routines or habits implies that behaviour is performed without awareness,
driven by a strong association between an environmental cue and the behaviour.
Let’s clarify. Imagine that you have a burger for lunch every day. Because you
have done this so often, you no longer think about having a burger when
lunchtime has arrived. Burgers for lunch has become a habit, which makes it
difficult to change that behaviour because you are not aware of it. Recent
research has demonstrated that the majority of our purchases in the
supermarket – up to 70% - is of a habitual nature. People tend to buy what they
always buy. Research has also shown that habits are the most important factor in
snack consumption. This even holds for people who have adopted a personal
goal of eating less or healthier. While these people are genuinely interested in
changing their behaviour, the habitual nature of their food decisions makes it
difficult to act differently from what they are used to do.
Summarizing. The majority of food decisions is mindless, which means that
people don’t think a lot about what and how much they eat, nor about where and
when they eat. Some mindless food decisions are impulsive, implying that people
are tempted by delicious foods in their environment, which they decide to have
in the spur of the moment. Most food decisions are of a habitual nature, however.
