The factors that influence our decision making and the 2 systems of our thinking.
Without even knowing, our nutritional choices are being influenced by external factors in our environment. We may believe we are in control of our choices and our actions in regards to food selections and purposes. This is true in a sense. Our brain is in control, however what we may not be sure of is which System of thinking in our brain is working. The purpose of this article is to help you slow down your thinking and train your brain to make quick and automatic decisions that are aligned with your goals.
Here are a few factors that influence our nutritional choices and behaviour:
Foods away from home tend to have more Calories, fat, sugar and salt and less fruits, veg, fibre.
Sensory elements such as lighting and sound (ambience), even the waiters personality can influence what and how much we eat at a restaurant.
Price is a huge factor. Price alone can have a greater impact over a health message.
When we’re given a large portion, we tend to eat a large portion.
Making foods more accessible leads to increased consumption/purchase and inversely making the less accessible reduces consumption/purchase.
In most stores the ratio of highly processed foods exceeds the volume of foods like fruits and vegetables.
Even just the sight of a highly preferred food increases our desire to eat [3]
It is quite important to note that most people don’t recognise the environmental factors that influence their decisions or deny being subject to influence by these contextual cues.
Our brains are amazing organs. They are small in comparison to our body but control everything that we do. Every thought, movement, action, memory. Our brains are in control of us, but what is in control of our brain?
In this article we will be discussing the 2 systems of thinking of our brain and the factors that influence our decision making when it comes to nutrition.
Key words:
Contextual influences: factors that influence our decisions
Heuristic: to find or discover, problem solving, self discovery
There are believed to be 2 systems in the brain:
System 1 is the brain’s fast, automatic, intuitive approach. System 1 is fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious.
System 2 is the mind’s slower, analytical mode, where reason dominates. System 2 is slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious.
By building skills through System 2, they can then become System 1 skills (more automatic).
Think about maths, simple addition or subtraction. You can automatically answer 2 + 2 = 4 or 7 x 3 = 21. At one point in time it was a lot more difficult, requiring more time and effort through System 2, but now it’s a System 1 task.
In nutrition, it might’ve taken a while to look at a food and say whether it was a Protein, Carb or Fat. Now you know Chicken = Protein, Bread = Carb, Avo = Fat. Once System 2, now System 1.
We can develop the System 1 skill by training System 2 thinking.
Basically how we can improve our nutritional knowledge and understanding to make informed decisions.
What is affecting our informed level of nutritional knowledge.
You might follow some great evidence based people on Instagram like Layne Norton, Martin MacDonald, RP Strength, Mackenzie Baker, and James Smith. Plus you’re huge FNC fans.
However there is still some gurus out there that add some biases into the brain that make you doubt some things or add confusion to the mix.
Not only that, everywhere you go, you’re processing information from your environment. Not only the people that you follow, the things on your newsfeed, the people you spend your time with - but nearly everywhere you go there is one or more of our senses being stimulated and informed about food.
There is research that suggests that our dietary behaviours are in large the consequence of our automatic responses to contextual food cues, many of which lead to increased Caloric consumption and poor dietary choices. [1] It also states that our brains have a limited capacity to recognise, ignore and resist the cues that influence our eating. Further confirming that humans have a finite amount of energy and willpower. There is only so much temptation we can endure before we give in.
When we look at restaurants and grocery stores, their primary role is for people to purchase food items. They are designed strategically to maximise sales. Research has been done on the location, labelling, pricing and pairing of items that influence us to buy certain foods. These foods generally aren’t the ones that fit into our “Protein and Plants” or goal aligned categories.
As we don’t have control over our senses (such as sight, smell, sound), we also don’t have control over the ways these senses are influenced through our environment in settings where food is available. We don’t even realise how the factors influence our food choices.
There is a growing body of research suggests that people respond to contextual cues without conscious thought or decision-making. This is our System 1 thinking taking over. Fast, automatic, instinctual, without conscious thought.
A study actually measured how quickly consumers can make a decision to choose a preferred snack food [2]. After ranking their favourites out of 50, they were presented with a series of random images of two of the snacks lasting 20 milliseconds and were able to choose their preferred food item in over 70% of trials at average speeds of 404 ms.
In more natural settings we tend to make decisions about food very quickly without weighing up options or consequences. When people make rapid decisions they rely on heuristic devices, such as the appearance of objects, familiar pictures, shapes, sizes, logos, brands and prices.
When we rely on this heuristic cues we tend to make larger, more Calorie dense choices that contain more sugar and/or fat. Food cues such as marketing or labelling also often tend to mislead and confuse people into making a decision by suggesting a food is more appealing or even more “healthy” than is really is. Think “protein” products, low carb/low fat items or our health halo foods.
When we make decisions surrounding food we often weigh up things like: price, sensory appeal (taste, texture, smell, sight), convenience, familiarity and even whether it is goal aligned.
This is all well and good if we actually took the time to do this by using our System 2 thinking process. However we often stick to the speedier System 1 version that requires the minimum amount of effort.
We previously mentioned that we have a finite amount of energy, willpower and self control.
Behavioural studies have been done and suggest that self control can fatigue just like a muscle. Self control can also be depleted by tasks that don’t require self control such as making decisions or doing cognitive tasks.
A study was done where participants who had to memorise a 7-digit number were 50% more likely to choose chocolate cake over fruit salad compared to participants who had to memorise a 2-digit number [4]. Imagine how much information your brain needs to process each day before it even thinks about food. Then throw in a tempting environment or a choice between ice cream or yogurt and you can see why it gets harder as the day or week goes on.
Hence why building healthy habits and making informed decisions are further endorsed by us at FNC.
When people are overwhelmed with too much information, they often resort to their more automatic behaviours. If your automatic behaviours (habits) aren’t goal aligned, this can cause an issue.
Cognitive depletion is considered a prime reason why dieters fail to maintain their diets and weight loss over the long term. [5,6] This means the more we are required to think during a given period of time, the less energy/willpower we will have and the more important it is to have a solid foundation of nutritional habits. Ideally we don’t want to take on more than our brain is actually capable of especially when trying to build new and positive behaviours for our health and fitness goals.
Hence why we promote a step by step approach at FNC.
How do we do this?
In the initial phases of building habits, take your time. Use your System 2 thinking process.
This requires you to be careful, intentional. Weigh-up your options, make comparisons, read labels, look at the benefits or consequences of certain choices.
Build up your knowledge and confidence in making choices that are aligned with your goals before relying on your System 1. Train your brain to make good, positive, goal aligned choices automatically just like you trained it to do quick math and label foods into their macronutrient category.
When you’re confident that your goal aligned choices are automatic, put your new System 1 thinking skills to the test.
If you’d like to improve your knowledge of nutrition to help make informed and automatic decision that are aligned with your goals, contact us today to start working with a coach or sign up to our education programs.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667220/
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1998456
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666384800082
[4] https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/26/3/278/1815363
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18444745
[6] https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2000.18.2.130