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