San Franciscans and New Yorkers spent years fighting to get nutrition information like calorie counts listed on menus. After all, if people only knew what kind of crap they were shoveling into their maws they’d surely change their behavior, right?
Looks like not. Stanford Researchers found that calories per transaction dropped a whopping 6% at New York, Boston, and Philadelphia Starbucks locations after the chain began posting calorie counts in 2008. A measurable result, yes, but skipping one week’s venti java-chip frappuccino per year isn’t exactly going to trim Homer Simpson’s waistline.
The information alone isn’t enough. Cosmopolitan folks in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia know what a calorie is, and they know that eating too many of them will make you fat. The number itself isn’t enough to motivate meaningful change.
But, frame it in terms of the number of minutes required to burn off those calories, and consumption drops a whopping 40%:
One asked if they knew that the average fizzy drink contained 250 calories, another asked if they knew it was equivalent to ten per cent of their recommended daily intake.
A third asked ‘Did you know that working off a bottle of fizzy drink or fruit juice takes about 50 minutes of running?’
Results showed that providing calorie-related information did cause sales to drop by over a third (40 per cent), but that the physical activity equivalent was most effective, reducing soft drink sales among teens by half.
Humans are very good at rationalizing away things we don’t want to do. We tend to automatically frame things to expend the least amount of energy and expose ourselves to the least amount of risk. Biologically, this is a rational way to go through life. But, if you want to excel in modern civilization, this is a terrible way to go through life.
That is, unless you can figure out how to use that hardwiring to your advantage. If your object is to stay skinny, framing a decision whether to eat another donut in terms of the number of minutes it would take to run that donut off is an excellent way to use that caveman brain of yours to make the healthier decision. If your object is to save money, framing a decision whether to buy those shoes in terms of how the number of hours of work it would take to raise or replace that money is an excellent way to use loss aversion to prevent impulsive action.
While it’s naturally easier for negative goals, like not eating or not spending, it’s not too hard to come up with motivational framing for positive goals. (“I need to start X project, because otherwise it’s going to take me 40 years of work, instead of 5, to get the job I want.”)
Figuring out how to properly frame things is the only motivation you’ll ever need.
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Actually, if you took the Starbucks example to your whole diet, then you’d end up eating 6% less calories, period. And, a 6% decrease in calories for my lard-butt, would reduce my currently maintained 300lbs, to 282, which you have to admit, is a little better. LOL
While I agree connecting calories to something more tangible than an abstract number will better “motivate meaningful change,” I don’t think “Cosmopolitan folks in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia know what a calorie is, and they know that eating too many of them will make you fat.”
I don’t think people understand the concept of energy that well. I’ve seen people call something nutritionally identical to soda healthy because it’s branded an “energy drink.”
Anyway, I agree with your post. Just a minor point.
Josh