Impulse shopping may contribute to obesity rates

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The candy display near the supermarket checkout line may be contributing to the U.S. overweight and obesity epidemic.

An editorial published on Oct. 11, 2012 in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that advertising and the location of certain food items may be leading to impromptu purchases of unhealthy foods. For example, candy near the cash register is actually a strategy known as "impulse marketing," which encourages emotion-propelled buying. Items placed in easy to see end-of-aisle locations make up for 30 percent of all supermarket sales, the researchers note.

"The reality is that food choices are often automatic and made without full conscious awareness," the authors wrote. "In many cases, they may even be the opposite of what the person deciding would consciously prefer. What and how much people eat are highly influenced by contextual factors that they may not recognize and therefore cannot easily resist."

About 33.3 percent of adults 20 years and older are overweight and an additional 35.9 percent are obese, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. An adult who has a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, while an adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese. Further, men who have a waist circumference of over 40 inches and women who have a waist circumference of over 35 inches are at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

The researchers argue as people try to make healthy food choices, they get inundated with unhealthy options, especially when they become distracted, under stress, tired or have made so many other decisions they can't possibly make another good one.

"Once cognitive capacity is depleted, automatic processing that relies on heuristics and other shortcuts dominates, and under these circumstances people are more likely to choose foods high in sugar and fat," the researchers wrote.

They suggest that people should consider product placement a "hidden risk factor" and more should be done to help people make good food choices. Just like people have mandatory rail guards and window guards to prevent them from falling, people should have food "guards" to help stop them from picking up that pint of ice cream or bag of chips, the researchers argue.

"We need to test new approaches to risk reduction that do not place additional cognitive demands on the population, such as limiting the types of foods that can be displayed in prominent end-of-aisle locations and restricting foods associated with chronic diseases to locations that require a deliberate search to find," the authors wrote. "Harnessing marketing research to control obesity could help millions of people who desperately want to reduce their risks of chronic diseases."

[eroteme2]

Wonderful! Hide our candy, outlaw 32oz sugary soda containers, we will very soon eliminate obesity and overweight problems. Unless there are those who manage to find and buy candy and there are, (certainly only a few, one would hope,) who drink two 16oz sugary sodas instead of one 32oz sugary soda. If this does not solve the problem for those who are now overweight or obese, or who are headed in that direction, we can always proceed to our next problem to solve. How about peace in the Middle East? No need to try to attain world peace, the popes have been praying for world peace for many years with no success, and they have a direct channel to God.

[liveloveforgod]

The food was changed in the USA, UK and Australia 30 years ago when dangerous food chemicals from the USA was allowed into Europe. The food today causes stubborn insulin If you have stubborn insulin you hold fat and have a hard time losing weight. You can eat very little and the weight still does not come off. Stubborn insulin will hold fat and diets won't work. When researchers used a specialized diabetes diet on overweight people all lost weight even those who did not have diabetes.

just google SPIRIT HAPPY DIET

http://spirithappy.org

[eroteme2]

We are getting sillier and sillier. Will we perhaps arrive with a legal procedure aimed at those dastardly people who drink two 16oz sugary sodas because there is no 32oz containers provided? And those establishments selling sugary sodas may soon have to triple the cost of their sugary sodas or face closure. There is little doubt, with the government's kindly hand we will very soon have no overweight or obese citizens. How foolish we are becoming, letting our government continue to increase their control over us.