Post on 16-Jan-2015
description
Food:Fun?
Frightening?Fundamental
Paul RozinUniversity of Pennsylvania
NRA, July 10, 2008
The risks of eating
Frightening
The risks of eating
• Short-term health
• Long-term health
• World welfare
corn
The risks of NOT eating
Fundamental
What is food and what is it for
Nutrition
Health
Social functions
(Pleasure)
What consumer?
• Age
• Gender
• Social Class
• Culture
• Americans and East or South Asians
• Americans and French
• Restaurants
Late 20th Century developed world
• Epidemiological revolution: longer life and death from degenerative diseases
• food surplus• Development of super-foods (hi sugar, hi fat)• Extraordinary variety• no work needed to attain choices• Thin body ideal for females• massive amounts of risk information• no training in dealing with risks/benefits
Innate liking for sweet taste and fatty texture
Sympathetic Magical Thinking
Law of similarity:
Image = Object
General across many animal species
Mismatch: Health information and lay ability to interpret it
• Lack of knowledge of probability and risk-benefit thinking
Negativity dominance
• Risks psychologically dominate benefits
• Additive: 1% increased risk of X and 1% decreased risk of Y: Rejected
• Vaccination: save X lives, kill small % of X: rejected
Risks and benefits
• Paul Slovic
• Correlation of risks and benefits
• Lay persons
• Experts
• Nuclear power
• Genetic engineering
• Risk and catastrophe dominance
Mismatch: Health information and lay ability to interpret it
• Lack of knowledge of probability and risk-benefit thinking
• Simplifying heuristics: e.g., good and bad foods, single properties-monotonic
A diet totally free of salt is healthier than a diet of the same number of calories that
includes a pinch of salt every dayGroup % Agree
College students 19
National Sample 27
Physical Plant workers 37
Overall 28
A pint of cottage cheese has more calories than one teaspoon of ice cream.
Group % Disagree
College students 30
National Sample 25
Physical Plant workers 38
Overall 31
Mismatch: Health information and lay ability to interpret it
• Lack of knowledge of probability and risk-benefit thinking
• Simplifying heuristics: e.g., good and bad foods, single properties, monotonic
• Lack of understanding of the scientific enterprise
Medicalresearch
Foodindustry
Govern-ment
Media
PublicNon governmentOrganizations
(NGOs)
Misinformation: Natural preference
• Almost everyone prefers a natural food to a commercial/processed food
• Why?
• Typical answers (instrumental)– Healthier– Tastes better– Better for environment
Specifying that natural and commerical are chemically
identical has very little effect on preference
Water: Process vs Content
• Logic
• Original Natural Form
• Add or remove something
• Remove what was added or replace what was removed (with same stuff)
• Rozin, JDM 2006
natural spring water with no minerals
Mean
Natural
(0-100)
Mean acceptable
(0-100)
Spring water with no minerals
92.3a 90.8a
Add .1% minerals from other spring water
68.8b 85.7b
Remove same minerals 62.4c 82.9b
a, b and c are significantly different in each column
Process vs Content: survey results from representative Americans
% reduction in natural: 100 point scale
Wolf Wild strawberry
German shepherd
12% Organic Strawberry
12%
Cocker spaniel
15% Commercial
Strawberry
41%
Pig with one gene insert
54% Wild with one gene insert
54%
Negativity dominance and “unnatural” additives
Fads and their exploitation
• Part of human nature
• Over-promoted as part of self-serving
• Sugar
• Cholesterol
• Long term nutrition advice:– Moderation, diversity (macro-variety)
The ethics of helping some by regulating all
• People are different• Groups/ cultures are different• Adding fat to the diet would help in most parts of
Africa• Cutting sugar• Cutting salt• Cutting pleasure in the interests of public health• Moralization• Cigarettes: Suing the industry for health costs
The combination of health and beauty norms
“Concerned about being overweight”
• % responding “often“ or “almost always”
• 57% females, 21% males
• US college students from 6 universities across the country
Rozin, Bauer & Catanese, 2003
“I am embarrassed to buy a chocolate bar in the store”
• American college students from six campuses across the USA
• % Females: 13.5
• % Males: 4
France versus USA
• Claude Fischler
• Rebecca Bauer, Dana Catanese, Kim Kabnick, Estelle Masson, Erin Pete, Alison Sarubin, Christy Shields, Amy Wrzesniewski
Life expectancy at birthUN Demographic Yearbook (1993
u country years rank country years
1 Japan 79.2 9/10 Israel,Italy 76.8
2 Sweden 78.1 11 Canada 76.4
3 Switzerland 77.8 12 U. K. 76.2
4 Australia 77.4 13 Austria 76.1
5/6 Norway,
Netherlands
77.2 14 Belgium 75.8
7 France 77.0 15 USA 75.4
8 Spain 76.9 16 WGermany 75.1
Overweight:France vs USA
• % BMI >= 25
• France: 39%
• USA: 61%
Age-standardized annual mortality from
CHD and related risk factors (males 35-64)
WHO/MONICA Renaud & de Logeril, 1992
Location Mortality / 100,000
Serum chol-
esterol (mg/dl)
Toulouse, France 78 230
Lille, France 105 252
Stanford, USA 182 209
The obesity “epidemic”
• Gain of a pound or two a year over the last 20 years in USA
• 2 apples a week
• (James Hill)
Percent of subjects preferring luxury hotel to gourmet hotel at the same
price
Female students Male students
France 13% 8%
USA 83% 71%
Percent of subjects saying “unhealthy” for choice:
Heavy cream: whipped or unhealthy
Female students Male students
France 28% 23%
USA 67% 48%
Percent of subjects agreeing that they eat a “healthy diet”
Females Males
France 76% 72%
USA 28% 38%
Metaphor: Food and the body are like:
USA France
Tree 26 66
Car or factory 43 26
Temple 32 10
Representative national samplesFischler, Rozin et al., 2004
Comforts and joys
• French more inclined to joys (e.g., new meal or new music from liked source) than Americans
The food environment
Restaurant portion sizeRestaurant France USA
McDonald’s (7) 189g 256g
Quick/Bking(5) 207g 322g
Chinese (6) 244g 418g
Rozin, P., Kabnick, K., Pete, E., Fischler, C., & Shields, C. (2003). The ecology of eating: Part of the French paradox results from lower food intake in French than Americans, because of smaller portion sizes. Psychological Science, 14, 450-454.
Supermarket food portions
ITEM Carrefour Acme
Y ogurt (modal) 125g 227g
Fresh fruit (mean,4 types)
431g 553g
Coca cola (modal)
330ml 500ml
Supermarket non-food portions
ITEM Carre-four
Acme
toothpaste (modal, ml)
75 170
toilet paper (mean, sq cm)
121 117
Cat food (modal, g)
100 85
Social norms and eating
Unit Bias
• Norm for eating one entity• M&Ms free in bowl• Small spoon or 4X spoon• 70% more consumed with 4X spoon• 60% more with double vs single pretzels
• Geier, A. B., Rozin, P., & Doros, G. (2006). Unit bias: A new heuristic that helps explain the effect of portion size on food intake. Psychological Science, 17, 521-525.
Preference for multiple varieties:Prefer choice of 10 or 50 ice
cream flavors
% prefer 10
France 68
USA 44
At a good restaurant, I expect a small number of choices
% expect small number
France 92
USA 64
French vs American differences(with Abigail Rosenstein & Claude Fischler)
• Quality vs quantity
• Moderation vs abundance
• Collective values vs individualization
• Joys vs comforts
• Food more associated with conviviality
• Environment limits modest amounts of food to mealtimes and smaller portions
Pleasure and health
• Learn from the French: Focus and savoring
• Fix the environment
• Incremental, below threshold changes
• Macrovariety
• Moderation: Less food, more pleasure
END