So now, this is a study that came out some time ago, but in thinking about what contributes to our collective population-wide poor quality diet. There are a lot of things and Valerie identified them as convenience, accessibility, variety, and so on. This is actually just an opinion poll that people have identified as these are the reasons they think that people eat a lot of junk food. These are the same ones that we know overlap with the things that we're seeing in the lab and with population trends with respect to diet and weight gain. So convenience again, it's what people like to eat, and this advertising thing too that we've. You know all those think outside the button or whatever else, these watching the ads for whatever else and like, "Oh, that looks good. I think I want one of those" There's like a priming effect to cravings and so on. Not a whole lot of people are thinking that people don't necessarily know what foods are healthy, but in some cases, I think that's also likely a legitimate reason. So when we think about these reasons of why people might be opting for junk food instead of the one ingredient pH or the cup of kale, where could we begin to get this information or apply some changes as public health professionals, these things tend to speak about changing the environment. This goes back to what I talked about in an earlier presentation about the importance of optimal defaults. This is particularly potentially understandable surrounding the food environment. So if it's more convenient to grab a bag of Doritos, is there a way that we can optimize to making it more convenient to grab a better food choice? Another one might be, if it's something that's heavily advertised, and junk food is something that basically created this natural level of craving for itself could be regulate advertisements in much the way the tobacco industry has made some significant progress. If it's more affordable to grab the bag of chips as opposed to fresh produce, is there something that we could do at the economic policy level? If people aren't aware of which foods are healthy or conversely which foods are unhealthy, is there a way that we could further education surrounding this? If thinking about the primary cause back here where we see people as we're identifying changing the environment would likely potentially intervene on the convenience factor for example, and thinking about our own dietary choices. I mean, when I'm making poor dietary choices and grabbing chips, it's because I'm on the run. It's because I have been sprinting from meeting to meeting, I'm getting home, I'm tired, I'm hungry. What can I grab that's fast and we'll be satiating? Making a salad? That's going to take efforts when they are chips right there like hamburger. In thinking about ways to change the environment, this all goes back to the conditioning theory where we had talked about, let's say for example, you have a snack while you're on the computer, and pretty soon that becomes like a mindless routine and you're not even necessarily aware. So pretty then every time you have a computer that becomes a conditioned stimulus for having cravings or psychological and potentially even unphysical hunger. So since we know that to be the case, might there be a way to intervene and break up these environmental cues? Nashion, you look like you have something to say,. Just like, "Well, don't eat chips while you're on the computer." You can still eat your chips or even just try not to eat anything in front of the computer. So that you're uncoupling these primed associations, and Pavlov, and the dogs, and the lab when they stopped ringing the bell, the whole salivation response doesn't happen. Of course, then it became conditioned to our life, but that's a whole other issue. But the point being that you have to like surprise. So there are a variety of ways to regulate or to impose irregular eating pattern and unwind the things and just to try to reduce eating in the car, or eating in front of a computer, in front of a TV, and actually enjoy the act of eating. That might be something that one could even choose for the nutrition goal would be to try to eat at the table all the time. I'll talk more about what I've chosen and what I'm doing for my nutrition goal this time as well. What this means for us with respect to the visual cues and with respect to potentially cleaning up the food environment. I want everybody to be thinking about this with respect to their individual food environments at home as well. If there are ways to achieve your nutrition goal by making environmental or structural changes, I think this will be more likely to inform public health efforts. So for example, placing the foods that you maybe want to reduce intake, if that's the goal, putting them in opaque containers instead of ones that are like, "Oh, doesn't that look appetizing" Versus what's in there? It could be like flower, cranial. For my nutrition goals last year was to drink more water, and I had this huge jug water bottle, but you couldn't see in it. It was just inconvenient, I had to unscrew it and all sorts of stuff. I ended up switching to just a tumbler with a clear top then straw in it, so like way easier and more convenient and I could see that actually how much water I drink. Straws are remarkably beneficial with respect to [inaudible]. So this would be excellent example of how to, and you've got the visual cue that appetizing and cool refreshing water, but also the mechanism of intake the straw makes it a lot easier than unscrewing and like you know. you could actually just keep typing. Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. Simple visual cues and how they can either optimize or reduce depending on what it is you're trying to do.
