Good food, bad food: The psychology of nutrition

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Imagine you are alone on a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick what food you think would be best for your health (never mind what food you would like).

Corn

Alfalfa sprouts

Hot dogs

Spinach

Peaches

Bananas

Milk chocolate

Paul Rozin, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, asked people this same question and found that 42% of people chose bananas, 27% spinach, 12% corn, 7% alfalfa sprouts, 5% peaches, 4% hot dogs, and 3% milk chocolate. Only seven percent of people chose a food that could actually offer them enough calories and all the nutrients they needed for long term survival. No, not alfalfa sprouts (not nearly enough calories): hot dogs and milk chocolate. These two animal products (the milk in milk chocolate) provide protein and fat, two necessary nutrients that would be deficient in the other foods. Overall, hot dogs would provide all necessary nutrients, sufficient protein, and a more optimal amino acid balance, suggesting they would be best suited to help you survive for a year.

So why is this psychology professor asking people what type of food they’d want to have if they were stranded on a desert island? Rozin found that people’s beliefs about what makes up a healthy diet is heavily influenced by psychology. In this particular paper (Rozin, Ashmore, & Markwith, 1996), he and his colleagues researched whether people’s views about a healthy diet were biased by something termed “dose insensitivity.” Before I describe what that is, let’s try out a few more of the questions that he asked people.

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