3 surprising insights on how food cravings relate to other desires in everyday life

What is harder to resist? Checking your Twitter or Facebook account at work or eating a delicious, but fattening snack when you try to watch your calories? Both are inner conflicts, best described as 'I really want to do this, but I should not'.

In many food studies it is assumed that people have conflicting feelings when being confronted with tempting foods. But is that really the case in everyday life? What type of cravings are felt most strongly? And if people do crave foods, how often are they trying to resist their desire?

Wilhelm Hofmann, Kathlees Vohs and Roy Baummeister recently tried to answer these questions in their Everyday Temptation Study. They gave BlackBerrys to 205 participants and contacted them on 7 random times per day for one week. When they were contacted, they had to indicate what type of desire they experienced within the last 30 minutes, how conflicted they felt about this desire, whether they tried to resist the desire and how successful they were in this. The study included all types of everyday desires, including the desire to eat, drink, have sex, sleep, spend money and use media (such as social media). Here are 3 insights that I found most surprising.

1)   Food is not the hardest desire to resist
People feel some desire about half the time they are awake. In hours, this is about eight hours a day. Almost half of those desires are conflicting at least somewhat with other goals in life.
Interestingly, food is not the hardest desire to resist. It is much more difficult to fight the desire for sleep and fun leisure activitities (such as checking Facebook). These two were considered to be the hardest to resist. Only 23% of all conflicting desires go against some health goals (for example healthy eating or exercise). The majority of reported inner conflicts were related to goals such as saving money, achievements at work or study, social appearance and efficient time use.

In other words, it is harder to resist impulses to spend money, participate in sports, use (social) media and smoke than it is to resist eating.

2)   We spend three hours a day resisting desires
The majority of desires in everyday life are not resisted. We have to eat anyway, so why trying to resist it? When people do try to resist them, they are quite successful in it; in 83% of all inner conflicts, they succeed to not give in. Still, in 17% of all occasions, people do give in. They particularly fail to resist checking e-mail, Facebook, Twitter of other social media when they do not want to do that.

3)   Stop resisting the numerous cravings throughout a day
Besides that we spend about three hours per day resisting desires, we also spend half an hour giving in to desires that we initially resisted. The more often you try to resist a desire, the less willpower is left at the end of the day and the more likely it is that you go for the 'forbidden' food. This confirms the 'muscle model' of willpower, which states that willpower is like a muscle that needs refuel.

So, do not replete your willpower, stop reading this blog post and go back to work.



What is harder to resist; Twitter and Facebook at work or the temptation of an unhealthy snack?

Hofmann W, Baumeister RF, Förster G, & Vohs KD (2012). Everyday temptations: an experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control. Journal of personality and social psychology, 102 (6), 1318-35 PMID: 22149456

Wanting to eat healthier, but little healthy foods sold at McDonalds

Most fast food restaurants do not share their sales data of healthy foods, but that did not stop Lyndall Wellard and colleagues to find out how many healthy items are actually sold at the biggest fast food chain in the world. They observed what people bought at 20 McDonalds restaurants in Australia. Of the 1449 meal purchases observed, only 1% could be considered healthy, 65% were unhealthy and 34% were take-away (so impossible to determine whether food is healthy or not).

Only 1% of all meals eaten in the restaurant! That is not much... Why would you sell healthy foods in a restaurant when hardly anyone is buying it? As a service to the 1% die-hard dieters who really do not want burgers and fries? Or to create a healthier image which may lead to higher overall sales?

According to a survey among Americans, 47% said they wanted restaurants to offer healthier items like salads. Even 23% said they tend to order those foods. Apparently many consumers like to have these items on the menu. Maybe as a license to indulge? Research of Wilcox and colleagues already showed that adding a salad or fruit to the menu makes you more likely to order fries. And to make it worse: consumers also tend to believe that adding a healthy item to a meal magically decreases the number of calories of the total meal.

In my previous blog post, I discussed the essay of Marion Nestle and David Stuckler on the influence of large food companies on public health. They are right, healthier foods are inherently less profitable. At least when eating out, most consumers seem to just want to indulge (without feeling too guilty).

Dealing with Big Food: Slow public health response to large food companies' influence

Recently, the world population exceeded 7 billion people. One billion of them is hungry, while at the same time two billion are overweight. This shows we have a huge problem in meeting people's dietary needs. As what people eat is increasingly determined by a few multinational food and beverage companies, this month a new series of articles on the influence of these companies ('Big Food') will appear in PLOS Medicine Magazine. Highly recommendable!

David Stuckler and Marion Nestle start off with their essay on Big Food's problematic influence on the global food system. The authors cite research that shows that the ten largest food companies control over half of all food sales in the United States. Unfortunately, what they successfully sell consists primarily of processed foods enriched in sugar, salt and fat. Frequent consumption of these foods is associated with excess weight and chronic diseases.

The decades-long fight against tobacco has provided us with insights on typical tactics used by industry to undermine public health measures such as taxation and regulation, they state. Basically, that is because food companies aim to maximize profits and not health. They do not like interventions that threaten their profits.

Public health professionals are slow in responding to the threat of Big Food and the authors therefore urge for more strong and conscious choices about how to deal with Big Food's influence. Dealing with the food industry involves more than partnering or waiting for self-regulatory initiatives. It requires a critical approach, recognizing the conflicts of interests that play a key role.

Stuckler and Nestle conclude by stating 'without taking direct and concerted action to expose and regulate the vested interests of Big Food, epidemics of poverty, hunger, and obesity are likely to become more acute'.  A strong plea for action...

Satiety enhancing food development: State of the art in the field of nutrition, food technology, consumer, marketing and technology

Developing foods that keep you feel full for longer is not a matter of simply adding extra fibers, water or air to a food. For many people, the signs of fullness that their body is giving them after eating are easily overridden by the temptations in our environment that trigger to continue eating. Think of the high visibility of delicious foods and large, convenient portion sizes. They all have substantial influence on the amount of food we eat and the resulting satisfaction.

Satiety is a complex interaction of physiological, social and psychological mechanisms.

Food providing enhanced satiety will have to function in the life of people surrounded by cues that stimulate excessive eating. This requires an integrated approach between various food-related disciplines.

This month, our new paper has been published: 'Successful development of satiety enhancing food products: Towards a multidisciplinary agenda of research challenges'. The paper presents the state of the art and key research challenges around satiety enhancings foods in the field of nutrition, food technology, consumer, marketing and communication.

My co-authors are Hans van Trijp, Joost van den borne and Charon Zondervan. Just click on the Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition-paper below to read it full-text.