Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices

The Invisible Influences That Guide Our Thinking

By: Jack Bobo

Narrated by: Al Kessel

Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Our food has never been safer or more abundant, and yet, consumers have never been more scared. Consumers have never known more about nutrition and never been more obese. The proliferation of healthy snacks and diet books has done nothing to stem the tide of obesity. In fact, for most Americans, making healthy food choices is more difficult than doing their taxes. What are we doing wrong?

Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices explores the hidden influences and mental shortcuts our minds use to process information and how that often leads to unhealthy food choices. Understanding these hidden influences can help us make better decisions. More importantly, we can learn to fear less, and enjoy more, the food we eat.

©2021 Jack Bobo (P)2021 Tantor

I must read, or listen to book

I enjoyed this book very much. Explaining exactly where we are in this generation. It’s a must read for anybody who wants to change their lifestyle and eat healthier, and be healthier.

Ugh

The exciting new approach is the same old socialism. The author shares some research studies in the first half of the book, all of which push the conclusion that "personal choice" is just an illusion; that individuals are helpless in the face of numerous temptations in the "foodscape;" and that people are just too busy to do any research into healthier foodways. And let us not forget that knowing what is right to do does not mean we will choose to do it, because Habit and Social Pressure.

[The only reason I gave 2 stars instead of 1 is because the studies CAN be helpful and informative; just not when employed in this slanted way. I know personal change is possible in a highly-tempting environment from personal experience and through the experiences of many relatives and friends.]

Solution? Social activism, organizing a movement. Social pressure on restaurants, food producers, and the general public to retrench and make smaller sizes the norm. The author describes the steps for creating a social media mob, to "nudge" people into joining in with a perceived group, so people will follow along out of fear of being ridiculed for NOT joining in. Evidently, free-market-style individual choice got us into this mess all unthinkingly, so we must create massive peer pressure on "Society" to change the foodscape so we can "make" healthier choices habitually, without thinking about it.

The suggested solutions - restaurants serving one meal pre-plated as 1 meal + 1 meal to go, or wrapping a footlong Subway sandwich into two separate sandwich portions - would be very wasteful in packaging materials [i.e., increasing landfill waste, which the author is also concerned about...] and in time. Nothing is stopping anyone from choosing to eat half their food and ask for a to-go box, or from eating half their Subway sandwich and using the same wrapper to fold away the 2nd half for later. We do this all the time in my family. Nothing prevents a person from ordering a la carte from a fast food menu, or ordering a value meal and filling the cup with plain water instead. (See my previous comment.) We also habitually bring water bottles with us whene we run errands or travel, and often order 3 value meals which we divide up among 5 people. No massive social media campaign necessary.

Evidently, this author believes we lack the intellect, motivation, and willpower to make choices good for us personally, yet have the intellect, motivation, and willpower to join a pseudoreligious socio-moral crusade against large food portions and overeating. IT'S NOT NECESSARY. All that's necessary is for individual people to make different choices on their own, and the private companies will respond to differences in sales. They track this sort of data minutely.

Also, among others, the writers at Spiked-Online in the UK express great frustration with the "nudging" government promoted by Bobo and Sunstein. It's like having a nagging wife, except you cannot leave home to get away from her - because she is the government and it wants to "nudge" you in socially-beneficial ways *everywhere* you go. (I am a wife; I know the power I hold for good or ill in my husband's life.) And governments are slower to respond than any other institution, and - per Michael Pollan - are more likely to get their dietary recommendations wrong. Anyone pushing for systemic, socialized change is deluded into thinking he knows more than he actually does.

Finally: the narrator speaks very slowly, with a highly nasal voice and a condescending, patronizing tone. I sped the replay speed up to 1.2 and that made the experience more tolerable. I did not want to give an opinion on only part of a book, which is why I finished this one.