Comment on Australians are choosing foods that contribute to leading causes of disease. Why?
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days agoSure but the idea that humans are silly automatons that follow price exclusively dies in first year econ classrooms. Canned beans are extremely cheap and much closer to a food you can sustain yourself on, yet marketing promotes the idea that fish fingers and a side of chips is a more reasonable meal than baked potato and a side of beans with sauce, which doesn’t feel reasonable. Palatability is also not the most significant factor because people also aren’t serving fish fingers and a side of gummy worms despite gummy worms being extremely cheap per calorie and hyper palatable.
We’re a long way from being able to restrict the sale of junk food legislatively but not that far from being able to prevent things like showing hot chips on a dinner plate as something reasonable to serve.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Hyper-palatability, and convenience are the two factors that fill in the blanks.
An individual person can be a rational, thinking actor - but when we are discussing macro-modelling, we begin to fall towards the mean/median of whatever takes the least amount of work to trick our brains to release the most happy chemicals.
Again, I say this as someone who has been on a ketogenic diet for over 7 years now - because I know I am someone hyper-susceptible to sugar addiction, it only took the slightest nudge (tired, tipsy, stressed) to push me towards the lazier, less healthy option - even knowing the long-term implications.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Sigh, read what I wrote re gummy worms.
Also sugar isn’t addictive, not in any meaningful way. It is pleasureable but labelling it as an addiction is a health crank position.
BadlyDrawnRhino@aussie.zone 3 days ago
But you can’t just pair two entirely unrelated hyper-palatable things as some kind of gotcha. No one pairs fish fingers with gummy worms because that’s an absurd idea, but plenty of people will pair fish fingers with potato gems, because they’re delicious separately as well as together.
No one is saying that marketing isn’t a factor here. But to ignore the combination of cheap, easy, and tasty misses a big part of the puzzle, and if we’re going to fix the problem, you need to consider all aspects.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
What people think of as absurd or not is informed by culture which marketing attempts to shape. There are absolutely dishes and combinations enjoyed in other cultures that would turn your stomach.
Something like potato gems needs to be understood to be in the same category as gummy worms. Not a normal meal food, a treat which is absurdly rich.
Price per calorie is obviously not the major concern, and I put to you most people probably have no idea about how much energy is in what they eat or what its nutritional merit is. They make decisions based on their impression of what is a reasonable food in whatever category.
Potatoes and fish are meal foods in our culture, and culturally they retain this after being deep fried and battered. However bread which is a meal food does not retain meal food status if battered and fried. See what I’m getting at?
If you can buy battered potatoes in the frozen veg isle, next to the peas, and it has pictures on it informing you that this is an entirely reasonable food to put on a plate with peas then you might easily grab some for that purpose.