The Psychology of Obesity and America’s Portion Problem
The 21st century “obesity epidemic” has long been an issue conveyed in foreboding figures: The American Heart Association places the count of overweight and obese Americans at 23.9 million children and 154.2 million adults. A recent United Nations Food and Agricultural report ranks the U.S. behind only Mexico on its list of the world’s most overweight industrialized nations. $147 billion a year in medical costs are currently tied to obesity. These staggering statistics do not bode well for future generations; financially, they indicate that the U.S. is on an unsustainable path, and socially, they imply the rise of an identified “Obese America:” land of the fried and home of the buttery.
Explanations commonly fall along socioeconomic lines. A 2007 University of Chicago study showed that minority groups in lower income brackets tend to reach higher levels of obesity than majority groups in higher strata do. While this correlation exists, eating behavior researcher Brian Wansink contends in Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think that affordability is not what drives overeating. Instead, he attributes the epidemic portion size, “a fact that will not change significantly with changes in affordability of food.”
Thus, obesity trends aren’t wholly explained by socioeconomics. The “portion problem” results from super-sizing meals and distorting what Americans consider a normal portion size. Most literature on obesity, while acknowledging existence of the portion problem, tends to spend more time decrying farm subsidies, which make fruits and vegetables more expensive than chicken nuggets or sweetened drinks, and school health standards, which have historically improved, but maintain levels of obesity rather than reducing them.
However, focusing only on the economics and politics of obesity, instead of on portion sizing, is a mistake. Aspects of human nature associated with the consumption of fatty and sweetened foods are often more indicative of the problem, and they can likely shed light on how to effectively solve it.
Old Habits Die Hard
We are prisoners of our own eating habits. Certain consumption patterns are essentially imbibed and shaped during early childhood. Dr. Alison Field, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Staff Scientist at Children’s Hospital Boston, told the HPR that “children with large portions served to them eat a lot more and are not great at compensating by eating less of other foods.” Exacerbating the problem, according to Field, is the fact that “foods targeted to children in general tend to be high in calories, high in fat, low in fiber, and often served in very large portion sizes.”
Once kids grow accustomed to eating large portions of food placed in front of them at a table or pitched to them through colorful advertisements for prepared food–fast food, quick service restaurants, and grocery store snacks–it becomes routine behavior. A study at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that 40% of children aged 2 to 11 ask their parents to go to McDonald’s at least once a week. It is this kind of habitual behavior that they carry on a subconscious level to adulthood, where many then find it a tall order to break out of the cycle of blind binging.
There is also a conscious, psychological desire for greater portions. Earlier this year, University of Washington professor and obesity researcher Adam Drewnowski found that one U.S. dollar can buy well over 1,000 calories of cookies or potato chips, but only 250 calories of carrots. Consumers often opt for “extra value” and “bang for your buck”– a concept Field distinguishes as “free refills and all you can eat buffets, which are great for your money but not good for your waistline.”
Advertisements that place emphasis on cheap abundance help foster this mentality that bigger is better, more cost-effective, and hence more desirable. Field stated that “companies spend a lot of time trying to change what people believe is the norm.” Consumers then start to feel cheated by smaller portions, an issue that both contributes to the portion problem and serves as a major hindrance to solving it.
A subconscious gravitation towards greater portions is also fueled by the myriad exterior circumstances. Chin Jou, Lecturer of History and Science at Harvard and former fellow at the National Institutes of Health, told the HPR that “people eat out of boredom, for the social aspect of it, to celebrate, or alternatively, when they are depressed.”
A 2005 Economics and Marketing study at Cornell best exhibits this concept. Participants were given an accurate visual cue of a food portion, a normal bowl of soup, and a biased visual cue, a self-refilling bowl of soup. On the whole, participants consumed 73% more when they were unknowingly eating from the self-refilling bowls. They did not believe they had consumed more nor feel more sated than when they were eating from normal bowls. Visual cues, rather than individual hunger cues, drove behavior – meaning given more, we eat more. These semi-subconscious tendencies to eat past the point of hunger are thus brought on by psychological states of mind, a fact that muddies up the area of potential solutions.
Where Bloomberg Went Wrong (But Also Right)
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg championed portion reduction in 2012 by proposing a ban on the sale of sodas and other sugary beverages larger than 16 ounces. However, he didn’t go far enough. Although the first department of the state supreme court’s appellate division rejected the ban and dismissed it as a “violation of the state principle of separation of powers,” the key problem was that the legislation was laden with loopholes that would exempt grocery and convenience stores and keep items like 7 Eleven Slurpies and Starbucks Frappucinos on menus across the city.
The ban was a positive attempt to make strides in the fight against obesity – it is currently pending review by the court of appeals (and was a large talking point of both mayoral candidates running to succeed Bloomberg in November). Although portioning is not always an issue divided along partisan lines, mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has espoused considerable support for the plan, while his Republican opponent Joseph J. Lhota vehemently disagreed with implementation of the ban for its potentially damaging effects on business.
Along with stronger ban legislation, measures that can be taken to cut portions include labeling serving-size information on prepared foods to more realistically inform buyers about their consumption, as well as mandating that restaurants meet certain serving-size regulations: the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute studies show that in one day the average American consumes 1,595 more calories than he or she would have eating the same food at typical portions 20 years ago.
There is no easy political fix; only prolonged action can eradicate the problem. Yet this should not discourage policymakers from standing with Bloomberg and attempting to change the tides of the tendency to binge and fall into a “bang for your buck” mentality. Mexico’s surpassing the United States does not make our obesity epidemic a non-issue. If anything, it should serve as motivation to fall even further down the list.
Image Credit: Flickr user ebruli, Wikimedia Commons