Food Blog: Why Do We Have Unhealthy Diets?

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Because they make sense

As a nutritionist, I often hear people – especially overweight people – make an unsolicited confession. “I’m so bad,” they say.  What they mean is, “I make unhealthy choices and I know it, but I still do it.”

What’s wrong with fast and cheap food?

How is it that so many of us make choices we acknowledge are at odds with our best interests?  The simple answer is: We don’t.  Our unhealthy choices are in fact consistent with our interests at that moment. Imagine yourself being ready for lunch, thinking about what to do. You are probably thinking: 

• What will taste good? 

• What can be produced and eaten in the time available? 

• How much am I willing to spend?

•What are the preferences of other people I will be eating with?

When taste, time, convenience and value are the important drivers of our food choices, fast food for lunch today is indeed an intelligent choice.

But I feel fine.  What’s the problem?

It is doubtful that people want food that will harm them and shorten their lives.  Still, for most of us, the healthfulness of food and the long-term effect of food choices on our health is not a conscious consideration at the moment of choice.

As we weigh all of the interests bearing on our decision, long-term health is likely to be among the lightest since the potential harm of this one meal is infinitesimally small and is delayed far into the future, while the benefits of that fast-food meal are immediate.  Ten to twenty years from now we may come to wish we had made a different decision.  However, we do not eat in hindsight.

Give them what they want 

So, how do we alter this situation?  Here are two approaches:

1. We can try to alter people’s decision criteria and elevate the salience of healthy eating and the long-term consequences of unhealthy eating. Unfortunately, that has been the dominant strategy for the past several decades, with poor results.  We should not cease promoting healthy living.  However, we need to recognize its limitations, or …

2. We can acknowledge consumer needs and work to meet them (taste, time, convenience and value) with choices that are also healthy. We need to understand the game that seems to be winning and play it well ourselves. Most of us are not indifferent to good health. In fact, we quite like it. An offering that addresses consumers’ needs for taste, time, convenience and value, and does that in a way that promotes health … well, that is a winning strategy.

Healthier eating is happening

Today, such competitive healthy options are limited, but they do exist and they are growing.  Consider the blossoming of salad lunch spots and sandwich shops where healthy offerings predominate. It may take a generation for this strategy to transform the landscape, but it is a strategy that will work. In fact, it is already under way.

What can you do? Stay tuned. I will address this in future blogs.

NEXT: Making Healthy Restaurant-Menu Choices