Brain food

Junk food changes your behavior

By Laura Grace Weldon

November 29, 2010

Sorry, it’s true.

You don’t even have to eat it for the changes to take place. It merely has to cross your mind.

Sure, we think we’re in charge of our choices. Our moods. Our long-term goals.

Apparently not.

A McDonald’s apple-pie dessert warmed in its cardboard sleeve can’t compare to sharing a slice of home-baked pie with a friend.

Marketers work hard to shape consumer behavior. They use findings from neuroscience to figure out just how many flashing images on a screen will keep our attention. They use psychological research to manipulate our wants. But we rationalize: “I’m the exception. I know my own mind. Just thinking about fast food can’t affect me.”

Chances are, it does.

A recent three-part study showed that the mere act of thinking about fast food makes people more impatient, more eager to use time-saving products, and less likely to save.

Wonder why we all feel hurried? In the first experiment of the three-part study, half of the participants were shown subliminal images of six fast-food chains (McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy’s). The images were seen only twice, for just 12 milliseconds — much faster than the conscious mind can recognize. Participants who were exposed to these subliminal images rushed through tasks even though they were under no time pressure.

Wonder why eco-friendly, well-made products aren’t top sellers? In the next experiment, participants were asked to recall a recent fast-food meal before rating products. When they did so, they were more likely to choose time-saving as the best rationale for making a purchase over other factors, such as environmental friendliness, aesthetics, or quality.

Wonder what happened to saving money? In the final experiment, participants who briefly looked at fast-food logos were much more likely, when considering compound interest, to choose a small payout immediately rather than wait for a larger payout later.

Children are even more at risk from this “fast-food thinking.” Because their brains are still developing through their teen years, young people are much more vulnerable to techniques used by marketers. Child-development experts see all kinds of detrimental effects, including what psychologist Allen D. Kanner calls the "narcissistic wounding" of children.

The problem is more, much more, than fast food. It has to do with a daily bombardment of messages telling us we should have it all and have it quickly — even though neither leads to greater happiness. As Robert V. Levine noted in A Geography of Time, people actually feel more impatient when they have access to time-saving devices.

There are benefits to waiting. Things like patience and a rush of pleasure when what you’ve been anticipating is finally ready. Picking apples together, cutting them, and baking them into a pie takes time. The smell of the crust breaking under your fork and the shared exclamation as you take the first bites together: bliss.

This experience can’t compare to a McDonald’s apple-pie dessert warmed in its cardboard sleeve.

What we eat and how we eat may no longer satisfy one of our deepest hungers: the desire for connection to people, place, and culture. We see the results of that separation in our health and environment.

Living in a fast-food society changes more than our eating habits. As that recent study indicated, we unconsciously hurry other aspects of our lives as well. When we find ourselves “getting through” anything to get on to the next thing, we’re ignoring the here and now. We’re ignoring our lives as they are in this moment.

Think instead of fast food as a metaphor, a symbol showing us that there’s another way to experience what’s right in front of us.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of Free Range Learning. She likes slow food and fast wit, and lives with her family on Bit of Earth Farm in Ohio. She contributed a recent post about children in the kitchen.