Hi Friends!
Time to recap another FNCE session for you guys! In case you missed it, check out my FNCE 2013 recap which also has links to my first two session recaps! I was drawn to this session immediately because you guys know I’m all about helping people make smart choices. Both presenters were fabulous and very engaging which made it a fun session even at 8am 🙂
Let’s recap:
How Consumers Decide What To Eat: Strategies for Making Healthy Choices
Speakers: Jim Painter, PhD, RD & Elizabeth Ward, MS, RD
Why are Americans gaining weight? We lose track of how much we are eating. The answer to the obesity epidemic is to beware of consumption.
What’s changed?
- 20 years ago, a bagel was 3 inches in diameter and 140 calories. Today the average bagel is 350 calories – equivalent to 5 slices of toast.
- When you order a value meal, you get an extra 600 calories on average!
- The Toll house cookies recipe yields 60 cookies now vs 100 cookies when the recipe was written in 1949.
What can we do?
- The amount of food on a plate, whether it’s one serving or four, is what most people consider a “normal” portion. We need to work on teaching people correct portion sizes. Bigger bowls and bigger spoons can increase portion consumption without you even knowing! Switch to smaller plates, bowls and utensils.
- Out of sight, out of mind. People ate 30% less candy when in desk drawer vs. on desk and 60% less when 2 meters away. If you want people to eat better, make healthy choices visible, accessible and readily available!
- Descriptive labels impact perception. Use this to your advantage and make healthy food sound good! People will enjoy it more!
What do people think?
- Americans eat according to the my plate pattern(meeting 70% of their nutrient needs) just 7 days per year. 2% of the time.
- Half of those people polled think it’s easier to do their own taxes than figure out how to eat healthfully.
- More than 40% of actions performed every day qualified as habits, not decisions. Use this to your advantage! Form healthy habits!
- Throwing info and facts at people doesn’t always mean they will change for the better. Asking people to make a change that’s too different than their regular behavior can be ineffective. Try small changes!
- Most people want to keep things the way they are. Loss aversion is the reason for inertia. Focus on adding good!
- Good for you may = tastes bad in consumer’s mind. Food needs to be healthy and enticing. Eating more produce is unappealing for many. Focus on suggesting tasty cooking methods to try, like roasting to bring out flavor.
- About half of people say that “taste” drives food choices, rather than “healthfulness. Healthy should never taste bad, healthy can always be delicious.
- People avoid change by thinking in the abstract. Make concrete, simple, realistic goals that can become healthy habits!
The good news?
- Willpower” buckles under stress and fatigue and challenging circumstances. But you can improve self control! Will power is like a muscle- work it and it gets stronger!
- Self-control in one area of life translates to other areas as well. Work on eating better and it may become easier to exercise more.
- You don’t need to try to change forever. Emphasize the process. Deal in the present. One healthy day at a time!
- There is power in groups! Obesity may be “contagious” but so is good health! sharing experiences can form healthy habits.
- We can help people resist temptation by recognizing triggers for unhealthy habits and forming healthy habits.
Know that taste and convenience rule the day for most people. Teach them how to make choices that are healthy AND work for them.
Let’s chat: What are you doing to help yourself and those around you make healthier choices?
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
Get my free Table Talk email series where I share bite-sized nutrition information about carbs, protein, and fat, plus bonus information about snacks and sugar!
I have found that if I do not bring bad food choices in the house it is a lot easier to eat healthier. I make sure when I shop to stay out of the aisles that would tempt me to make bad choices. I never buy anything off a display only aisle shelfs. Having Halloween candy in the house was the worst this past week. It was very tempting to have some so we got rid of it and now we do not miss it. Thanks for all you do with your blog as it also helps to make smart choices! Keep up the good work.
This is so very interesting. I try to help my husband and I be healthy by keeping mostly healthy food around the house at all times. Occasionally I make us a sweet, but we don’t have that all of the time. I try to make sure we always have protein and vegetables with our meals, and I feel like this works for us.
Since I started to be healthy I’ve noticed that junk food doesn’t even appeal to me. I just don’t understand why some people have to drink a pop or have a bag of chips everyday. Sure I still will make cookies (and eat a lot) but after a weekend of eating unhealthy I’m so ready by Monday to cleanse my body!
Love this series & always so interesting!!! I so agree with “The good news”…. been there & done that in some of them! 🙂
It’s certainly easier for me when I can’t see the junk food. My boyfriend loves unhealthy snacks so they’re in my home. I need to remind myself how I’ll feel when I eat them to keep from the temptation. I try to cook him healthier foods so he can see that he can have the best of both worlds!!
Awesome info! Thanks for sharing. I’ve noticed that my friends sometimes ask how I make some of the foods I post on the Instagram, and that the food looks healthy AND delicious! One of my favorite things that I’ve discovered through healthy living blogs is that healthy eating doesn’t have to be difficult or bland. It’s rather the opposite— fun and oh so tasty 🙂
I absolutely love these posts. It is alarming to me that the poll indicated people would rather do their taxes than figure out how to eat healthy. It is simple!
I am trying to just take it one day at a time. I cut one bad thing out for me each day and aim to pick healthier nutritionally dense foods instead of meaningless eating. I am hoping that my changing my lifestyle that I will encourage my husband to make healthier decisions as well!
when i was in college, i spent a semester doing a research grant on this very topic for my nutrition degree. It’s scary how control is left up to the consumer and how little they know about nutrition –> yes educate!
After 13 years of having the same dishes it was time for new ones. Imagine my surprise when I ordered some and they wouldn’t even fit in my cupboard! I assumed all plates were the same size so I measured my old ones and then tried to find some the same size – they don’t exist anywhere (that I looked)! Most plates were at least 1/4″ bigger. So I ended up getting bigger plates and rearranging my whole kitchen so they’d fit in my cupboards. The first night I used them I put my supper on and it looked so little and pitiful! I’ve started using the new salad plates (which are also bigger than my previous ones) just so my food won’t look little – I feel like I know enough to not fill up a bigger plate but the appearance just looked “off”.
I agree! I always use our salad plates because the other ones are just so darn big!