Health

Food Scares Don't Alter Behavior

by Karenke4 | February 4, 2009 at 05:36 pm

342 views | 18 Recommendations | 7 comments

Food scares don't cause us to change our eating habits, according to recent studies. In recent years, though there have been numerous food awareness issues ranging from salmonella to listeria, melamine to mercury.

"People might make the connection for the short term," said Harry Balzer, vice president of NPD Group, a market research firm. "But your taste buds are very, very difficult to change."

Humans have proven time and again how reluctant we are to change or alter our diets, or perceptions. We are hard wired to follow the patterns we've already developed, which is why it is so hard for so many to lose weight, quit drinking or alter other potentially harmful behaviors that are pre-programmed.

Take, for example mercury levels in fish. In the last several years there have been increasing numbers of studies that express the harmful levels of mercury found in certain types of fish. More people are aware of this as well, and yet fish consumption over the last few years has not altered much.

The number of adults aware of and concerned about the problem jumped from 58 percent in 2003 to 69 percent in 2008, while the percentage who say they plan to eat less fish or avoid seafood entirely has remained between 20 percent and 22 percent.

While this may be good news to for the industries that provide these foods, how good is it really for our health?

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Terri Potratz

at 18:22 on February 4th, 2009

True. I warned my family about the salmonella tainted peanut products, and one of my brothers jokingly shrugged it off.

"Salmonella? No big deal. I'm young, I'm fit. Not giving up peanut butter."

He really, really likes peanut butter.

spirithiker

at 18:32 on February 5th, 2009

spirithiker has contributed a photo to this story.

MisforMysterious

at 18:42 on February 5th, 2009

There's always going to be some kind of food scare. I'm not just going to stop eating something because of that. It would be like living in fear.

Garfieldeatoldy

at 06:41 on February 6th, 2009

Garfieldeatoldy has contributed a photo to this story.

car1edb

at 09:40 on February 6th, 2009

Most of the reports are junky, after about a week another comes out to tell you the opposite...guess its down the consumer which one to believe or has the most brunt.

-I bet you could find reports on almost any ingredient in any processed food that is bad for you.

"We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy"

AQM WTY

at 16:03 on February 13th, 2009

Delicious and necessary !

AQM WTY has contributed a photo to this story.

Fripouille

at 13:34 on February 16th, 2009

This is a very interesting post and it brings up some complex issues.

I am not qualified to say how much influence is exerted by "pre-programmed" ideas (I would like to see, and would welcome, more evidence before accepting that very tempting scenario on face-value), but, in my humble layman's view, there is another behavioral pattern at work here as well.

Things have gotten so bad that I often hear people saying things like "Yes, but if we stop eating all this polluted/chemical/genetically modified/mislabelled/etc food, there'll be nothing else to eat. There's no choice!" or "I know, but it's not doing me any harm" or "I don't have the extra 10% that good meat and fish cost, I have three kids to feed".

In other words, sad to say, people, particularly those on low incomes, are becoming resigned to eating this stuff and are not having access to information that proposes alternatives at reasonable prices.

My lifestyle and income permit me to be more choosy. But if I had three kids, a low income and a job that took up ten hours a day, I fully acknowledge that things wouldn't be so easy...

Thanks.