People estimate that, on average, they make about 15 food- and beverage-related decisions each day. But the truth is, they make more than 15 times that — more than 200 such decisions.
Commenting on his new Cornell study, Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, observed, “So many food decisions are made on mindless autopilot.” The problem with making so many more food decisions than we are aware of, he said, is that “each of these small decisions is a point where a person can be unknowingly influenced by environmental cues.”
When Wansink and Jeffery Sobal, Cornell professor or nutritional sciences, asked 139 university staff and students to estimate how many decisions they make about food each day, the average response was 15. However, when the volunteers then answered specific questions about when, what, how much and where they ate and who made decisions about meals, snacks and beverages, the researchers found that the staffers and students actually made an average of 221 food-related decisions each day.
The study is published in the January issue of Environment and Behavior.