Junk food cravings are triggered by the mere thought of being low class

Link between socioeconomic and poor nutrition may partly be in the mind.

Read the whole story

 

[Fritzr]

nononsense[/url]"l1tmdmj]

maxp0wer[/url]"l1tmdmj]Flawed experiment. These people were just role playing, and conforming to the expectations of the hypothesis. "Imagine yourself poor... now what do you eat?" You see a healthy option and a junk food option, and quickly discern what the researchers want you to choose. Poor method.

Agreed. If you ask someone to pretend to be someone they are not, then that is what they will do. They will give you a performance.

And a performance is an indicator of nothing but the individuals acting abilities.

You might as well just ask them, "Which of these foods do you think poor people would like more?" and be done with it. No pretending necessary.

That gets a nice opinion poll about what the people polled think the poor eat, but it says nothing about what they will choose.

Get them to rank themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (not what the researchers think ... this is self evaluation) and also ask which foods they prefer. Now make a chart of food choices by people who self selected each choice on that status scale. The actual self ranking was done in a biased way. First: Compared to the very rich where do you think you rank socially, Second: Compared to the very poor, where do you think you rank socially. Then for all participants, ask which food is preferred.

You now have 20 categories ... 1-10 comparing themselves to the wealthy and 1-10 comparing themselves to the poor. This does not measure their actual social or financial status, but instead the opinion of the person marking the paper.

People who rated themselves lower on the scale also preferred high fat/sugar food and people who rated themselves higher preferred "health foods".

The article appears to state that there is a statistically significant correlation between perceived social status (self rating) and food choice. There is also a correlation between self perceived social rank and the amount of food eaten when given an all-you-can eat option. High rank ate less, low rank ate more.

 

[JPan]

Wutt? Sounds idiotic. Like one of those 80% of psychology or sociology papers that cannot be replicated? I will wait till someone replicates this study.

Weirdly enough 30+ years ago and also in the more unequal times of the Vanderbilts and other trusts 95% of people were not obese.

Which brings me to my conclusion that portion sizes and the inability to drive everywhere and also social pressure ( try to be fat in Japanese society for example) are more important than whatever the effect of the study is.

 

[pqr]

Always pains me how low standards're in sociology and reporting on sociology. Serious scientists dont make statements that can turn out to be wrong without adequate cushioning in conditionals or inserts like going out on limb here etc. Only reliable takeaway here's that Singaporean university students think being poor means eating more junk food.

OOH if you ask me to roleplay being poor of course I'd do same (pick more junk food) based on both stereotypes, logic and observations in US. OTOH it's quite interesting for Singapore because both in India and China/Taiwan McDonalds actually considered relatively high class if you're poor you'll never eat in MD because there're street food options waaaay cheaper (assuming you can afford food at all esp in India). Personally I'm totally unconvinced that perception of your own social class plays any relevant role here for typical person (population average) though factors correlating with social class of course do. In fact I think poor people eating MD at least in US know full well that eating there's regarded being poor.

And re: raisins. By some definitions they're only real food on that list with chips and M&Ms being engineered and super processed... I'd likely pick none because I dont need any of those three and anyway raisins dont quell hunger that much but if I must pick one then surely raisins

 

[Geebs]

HiredGoons[/url]":34x6eg6j]This study sounds rather American-centric. I doubt the same sort of thing would hold up in Asian countries like Japan or the Philippines.

According to the article, the study was performed in Singapore. Can't confirm directly because PNAS has a paywall.

P.S. heh heh heh eheheh heh heh..... PNAS...... eh heh heh

 

[Geebs]

Fatesrider[/url]":34gogaxz]

More important for humans, the findings suggest that we may not be able to tackle obesity by just improving access to healthier foods and promoting exercise.

There have been multiple studies that appear to completely undermine the notion that "eat less, exercise more" (which is essentially what eating healthier foods and promoting exercise implies) is the best way to deal with obesity.

To be more accurate, the available evidence shows that telling people to eat more healthily and exercise more isn't effective, but that's because they don't follow advice when unsupervised. A calorie is still, by and large, a calorie.

I have yet to see the evidence that this fashion for sagely telling people that earning healthily and exercising doesn't improve their health, improves weight loss outcomes in any meaningful way.

 

[wolfie1]

The researchers have obviously never been poor. Cakes and pastries is mostly given as donations to food banks ect, they expire but have a long shelf life.... so they need to be given away. yes when I finally found a job and my weight dropped to 170 lbs from 220 lbs. The poor find themselves living off pastries.

 

[shaguarwkl]

This study cannot possibly draw a valid conclusion. I know a lot of wealthy people who get junk food cravings who can easily afford to spend 300 bucks a day every day eating all their meals at expensive restaurants and they still do the occasional trip to McDonalds.

Some of the work I'm involved in, when we close a deal, quite a few of the team would do a pig out at McDonald's as a celebration ritual. These guys don't work on deals under 50 million.

I am acquainted with or know at least 50-60 people who are all like that, and that is almost half the sample size of the study.

Everyone of them, myself including, get a McDonald's craving once a week, I don't see how we would be seeing ourselves at the low spectrum income bracket and make the conclusion that junk food is how we can survive. I attribute this for myself from my college and programming days where McDonald's was the most efficient way to get a meal and minimise time away from the computer or without leaving the computer.

Also this study doesn't take into account too many factors. For example, in Manhattan, if I can only afford a McDonald's meal, I have so many other options at the same price, Chinatown fast food, Deli sandwiches, etc. Last I checked, Manhattan is one of the most expensive places to live in, not just in US but in the entire world.

So I totally do not see how the results of this study is even remotely valid.

 

[shaguarwkl]

Fritzr[/url]":1gg2g69y]

nononsense[/url]":1gg2g69y]

maxp0wer[/url]":1gg2g69y]Flawed experiment. These people were just role playing, and conforming to the expectations of the hypothesis. "Imagine yourself poor... now what do you eat?" You see a healthy option and a junk food option, and quickly discern what the researchers want you to choose. Poor method.

Agreed. If you ask someone to pretend to be someone they are not, then that is what they will do. They will give you a performance.

And a performance is an indicator of nothing but the individuals acting abilities.

You might as well just ask them, "Which of these foods do you think poor people would like more?" and be done with it. No pretending necessary.

That gets a nice opinion poll about what the people polled think the poor eat, but it says nothing about what they will choose.

Get them to rank themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (not what the researchers think ... this is self evaluation) and also ask which foods they prefer. Now make a chart of food choices by people who self selected each choice on that status scale. The actual self ranking was done in a biased way. First: Compared to the very rich where do you think you rank socially, Second: Compared to the very poor, where do you think you rank socially. Then for all participants, ask which food is preferred.

You now have 20 categories ... 1-10 comparing themselves to the wealthy and 1-10 comparing themselves to the poor. This does not measure their actual social or financial status, but instead the opinion of the person marking the paper.

People who rated themselves lower on the scale also preferred high fat/sugar food and people who rated themselves higher preferred "health foods".

The article appears to state that there is a statistically significant correlation between perceived social status (self rating) and food choice. There is also a correlation between self perceived social rank and the amount of food eaten when given an all-you-can eat option. High rank ate less, low rank ate more.

There is this term called Rich Man Disease that's quite prevalent in many parts Asia and it's referring to health issues only wealthy people get which is exactly what the result of this study is saying Poor people get. Mainly high cholesterol, high blood pressure, Gout, etc, mostly attributed to eating TOO WELL.

The people behind this study is what I call a cubicle analyst, never left the cubicle and looked at data and come to conclusion without understanding all the complexities of that data.

 

[AlexisR200X]

MeghanAJH[/url]":2jczigl2]From the article -

"When researchers merely prompted study volunteers to consider themselves low-class, they were more likely to prefer, choose, and eat larger amounts of food, as well as higher-calorie foods. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, echo what’s been seen in a variety of animals—from birds and rodents to nonhuman primates."

What? How do you prompt a lab rat to consider itself low-class?

This begs the question, were this participants actually making choices based on class that they would make on their own or simply making choices they thought lower class folk wold make due to their own preconceived notions of what poor people eat?

 

[isparavanje]

pqr[/url]":ume0vcbc]Always pains me how low standards're in sociology and reporting on sociology. Serious scientists dont make statements that can turn out to be wrong without adequate cushioning in conditionals or inserts like going out on limb here etc. Only reliable takeaway here's that Singaporean university students think being poor means eating more junk food.

OOH if you ask me to roleplay being poor of course I'd do same (pick more junk food) based on both stereotypes, logic and observations in US. OTOH it's quite interesting for Singapore because both in India and China/Taiwan McDonalds actually considered relatively high class if you're poor you'll never eat in MD because there're street food options waaaay cheaper (assuming you can afford food at all esp in India). Personally I'm totally unconvinced that perception of your own social class plays any relevant role here for typical person (population average) though factors correlating with social class of course do. In fact I think poor people eating MD at least in US know full well that eating there's regarded being poor.

And re: raisins. By some definitions they're only real food on that list with chips and M&Ms being engineered and super processed... I'd likely pick none because I dont need any of those three and anyway raisins dont quell hunger that much but if I must pick one then surely raisins

It might interest you to know that Singapore is richer per capita than the US. Why would a comparison with India or China mean anything?

 

[Bloater51]

Interesting that so many who have commented here treat income and social status as being the same thing. They are not. There is a high correlation, but also exceptions. For example, many health care workers and teachers in western society are poorly paid by comparison with others of similar background and education, but are usually considered by themselves and others as of higher status than others on a similar income.

Surely the reason for doing these studies is precisely to distinguish between the two. In the UK, at least, there is a clear statistical relationship between income and things like obesity and general health. But poverty, in itself, does not make people obese, as examples from elsewhere make clear, and rising absolute incomes, in terms of food affordability, have been associated with increasing obesity (predictably so). The more studies done, and the wider their cultural diversity, the better.

 

[Hapticz]

hummph, uppa class peeple studying wat Lowa class peeple do!

ken we start some kinda 'Lowa class mattrs" riot here?

we'll do it in front of da wite hows, or some MacDonalds corporate hedqwatahs.

an weel bring sum pork rynds and lots of docta peppah sodee to swill down.

Tis' the season to be Jolly! da dee daaa, dee da da daaah!

Hava nize holiday!

(Mmm, the cheer is flowing nicely already!)

eh, so starve me to death with yer lowly downvotes! ya scrooges!

 

[MatthewFrederick]

shaguarwkl[/url]":l6gv12zi]This study cannot possibly draw a valid conclusion. I know a lot of wealthy people who get junk food cravings who can easily afford to spend 300 bucks a day every day eating all their meals at expensive restaurants and they still do the occasional trip to McDonalds.

Some of the work I'm involved in, when we close a deal, quite a few of the team would do a pig out at McDonald's as a celebration ritual. These guys don't work on deals under 50 million.

I am acquainted with or know at least 50-60 people who are all like that, and that is almost half the sample size of the study.

Everyone of them, myself including, get a McDonald's craving once a week, I don't see how we would be seeing ourselves at the low spectrum income bracket and make the conclusion that junk food is how we can survive. I attribute this for myself from my college and programming days where McDonald's was the most efficient way to get a meal and minimise time away from the computer or without leaving the computer.

Also this study doesn't take into account too many factors. For example, in Manhattan, if I can only afford a McDonald's meal, I have so many other options at the same price, Chinatown fast food, Deli sandwiches, etc. Last I checked, Manhattan is one of the most expensive places to live in, not just in US but in the entire world.

So I totally do not see how the results of this study is even remotely valid.

Valid or not, you're missing the point, inadvertently agreeing with it. You're saying that rich folks can eat all the junk food they want but don't. Right, exactly. They enjoy certain foods, including some McDonalds.

They're not driven to consume as much high calorie food as possible, but poor folks are. That's the hypothesis-cum-conclusion of the study.

 

[MyOilLasts3000Miles]

So the researchers pretended they were poor and then assumed that poor people like junk food because they are poor? I am confused.

Also, no one likes raisins, especially in cookies.

 

[CraigJ ✅]

This must be why I crave Filet Mignon and 1959 Dom Perignon.

 

[SixDegrees]

MyOilLasts3000Miles[/url]":1ghseqvq]So the researchers pretended they were poor and then assumed that poor people like junk food because they are poor? I am confused.

Also, no one likes raisins, especially in cookies.

No, that's not what happened.

 

[Phyllis Stein]

Gigantic amounts of food are put on your plate in American restaurants.
Therefore all Americans must be low class.
A lot of Americans,even rich ones, look much fatter than Europeans.

 

[murbe]

Fritzr[/url]":bfmnijie]

murbe[/url]":bfmnijie]This research smells. I wouldn't take it too seriously. We don't know if people were shaped by their desires for fattening foods, or their preconceived notion that when you are poor you eat shitty foods.

I think there could be a link between the quality of food someone eats and their economic outcome. But, I think it is probably a link that combines poor economic decisions and poor food decisions to some underlying fault of the person. If you can't resist the temptation of a twinkie, then can you resist procrastinating doing your homework? Low discipline could explain booth outcomes.

The trait observed here and in animals is that those that have a low social rank will gorge when food is available more than those with high social rank.

The reason is obvious if you watch wolves eating. High rank wolves eat their fill while low rank wolves stand off and try to steal a few bites while hoping there will be leftovers.

Give them a shot at a high calorie meal without harassment and those low ranking wolves will stuff themselves until they can't eat anymore.

Pretty much the same with humans. A person with high social rank rarely has trouble finding a meal, so eating just because food is available is unimportant. A person with low social rank and little or no money will eat as much as they can whenever food is offered...after all they do not know for certain when their next chance at a decent meal will occur. Sweetness and high fat content signal high calorie content, which is what will be favored when the food supply is unreliable.

There is also a genetic component. Most dogs given an always full food dish will maintain a healthy weight. There is an identified gene in Labrador Retrievers that relaxes this self limiting of food intake. Labs with this particular gene will become obese as they do not limit their food intake in the normal manner.

Source

Well, it can't be universal, because not all poor people are overweight. And I don't think it is plausible for that gap to be completely attributed to not being able to afford enough food to get fat. Many of the cheapest foods are the most fattening.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure where this even gets us. It serves to legitimize bad nutritional choices of the poor. Why would we want to do that?

 

[SixDegrees]

Phyllis Stein[/url]":321faclx]Gigantic amounts of food are put on your plate in American restaurants.
Therefore all Americans must be low class.
A lot of Americans,even rich ones, look much fatter than Europeans.

Not so much. Mexico passed America as the most obese nation on earth several years ago, and both Britain and Europe as a whole are waddling up fast from behind, vying for the lead.

 

[Hapticz]

Phyllis Stein[/url]":1evlh4af]Gigantic amounts of food are put on your plate in American restaurants.
Therefore all Americans must be low class.
A lot of Americans,even rich ones, look much fatter than Europeans.

with more and more outcry about 'shaming' those who don't fit in (or into their clothes), these obese types are free to expand without any peer/social restrictions, in essence, the PC crowd says, "Hey Its OK to be a Big Massive YOU!!" as long as they are happy (and f..t) that's what REALLY matters!

In other words, be yerself, be your own person, be undeniably and identifiably YOU!

Kids are bulked up by mama. Lots of them already have a head start at gaining full expansion properties by the time they get to age three.

They have only to whimper and make some noxious tantrum and out comes the 'juice and cookies", to shut them up.

How many times do you see mama whip out some slender carrot sticks on a public transit to keep their tired, whining child quiet? tell me!

 

[jihadjoe]

I have a funny anecdote that surprisingly agrees with this story.

A friend I met in college was born to a wealthy family (his dad was a lawyer representing a huge company), and said friend had never eaten fastfood in his life. Thing is, with seeing McDonald's and Burger King in TV commercials, he thought that their family must've been poor because they never got to eat the things he saw on TV (and I guess fine dining must've looked something like home cooked meals when your own house had similar decor). He was so happy when he was finally able to go out with friends and 'splurge' on that Big Mac, lol.

 

[kerikoli]

Survival instinct is killing those poor people...

 

[Alan H.]

So, pretend you are someone whom you know nothing about being, then do what you think they might do, then wrap it in a nice bow and call it "Science". What complete and utter crap.

 

[grrrz]

There's often a relationship between economic capital and cultural capital. People with high cultural capital, even if they live modestly, usually don't see themself as being "working class" (or worst, they do, but they mean it in a romantic way).
It's very probable that taste for more varied less-caloric food is corellated with higher cultural capital, where the taste for a wider variety of food is often acquired young, including a taste for not systematically going for the fatter, most sugary food. Besides learning to cook healthy food is not a given for everyone, and junk food is cheap and wildly available.
A good sociologist could easily conduct a study with broader picture than this one. I'm not conviced at all by the conclusion, basically that you eat caloric food because you're not sure when your next meal's gonna be.

 

[grrrz]

Bloater51[/url]":qub9c4qg]Interesting that so many who have commented here treat income and social status as being the same thing. They are not. There is a high correlation, but also exceptions. For example, many health care workers and teachers in western society are poorly paid by comparison with others of similar background and education, but are usually considered by themselves and others as of higher status than others on a similar income.

Surely the reason for doing these studies is precisely to distinguish between the two. In the UK, at least, there is a clear statistical relationship between income and things like obesity and general health. But poverty, in itself, does not make people obese, as examples from elsewhere make clear, and rising absolute incomes, in terms of food affordability, have been associated with increasing obesity (predictably so). The more studies done, and the wider their cultural diversity, the better.

Being poor is as much a question of objective material conditions as a subjective feeling. As I said in my previous post, people with higher cultural capital maybe won't see themself as poor, even if they live with modest income. Besides the study specificaly specifies people to rank themselves on a ladder "from rich, educated..to poor, uneducated). So no the distinction is not made at all here. The question is mostly of perceived social status, they're never ask for their actual income. and I don't agree with their conclusion, that disagrees with very basic knowledge of sociology.

 

[grrrz]

shaguarwkl[/url]":9eqh0i7o]

There is this term called Rich Man Disease that's quite prevalent in many parts Asia and it's referring to health issues only wealthy people get which is exactly what the result of this study is saying Poor people get. Mainly high cholesterol, high blood pressure, Gout, etc, mostly attributed to eating TOO WELL.

The people behind this study is what I call a cubicle analyst, never left the cubicle and looked at data and come to conclusion without understanding all the complexities of that data.

I agree, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, but seems like it's comportemental psychology not at its finest. "let's treat people like rats and not account for the entire history of sociology, philosophy and so on to shed a different light on our findings, and come up with a purely speculative conclusion rooted only in the field we're familiar with. because we know nothing else."

 

[Dedale]

grrrz[/url]":24fk16ei]

(...) and I don't agree with their conclusion, that disagrees with very basic knowledge of sociology.

Would you care to explain a bit ? I am not being sarcastic. I am interested.

 

[staskaya]

Meanwhile, Bourdieu is somersaulting in his coffin...

 

[grrrz]

Dedale[/url]":3w0f8xdg]

grrrz[/url]":3w0f8xdg]

(...) and I don't agree with their conclusion, that disagrees with very basic knowledge of sociology.

Would you care to explain a bit ? I am not being sarcastic. I am interested.

look at the post above the one you're quoting, but basically acquiring a taste for healthy, varied and exotic food is probably linked with higher cultural and/or economic capital. While acquiring a taste for fast-food is often correlated with lower cultural and/or economic capital. Economic and cultural capital are not automatically correlated, but even hypothetically "uneducated" rich people would be raised to consider eating fast-food as degrading or below themselves, where "uneducated" poor people would be raised to consider healthy food as "fancy" and a bit suspicious, and fast-food as "good for them" or "normal". (my apologies to Bourdieu's rest for the quite messy explanation).

 

[Velma Velvet]

Thankfully for me restaurant food tastes too salty so I rarely eat it. Unfortunately a pie made with fresh organic fruit, real sugar, unbleached flour and butter is almost as unhealthy and just as fattening as a McPie. Maybe even more so. I wouldn't call it junk but you can get just as fat from home cooking with all the health problems that go with it.

 

[NullSignal]

SixDegrees[/url]":s06o1ucv]

GreyAreaUk[/url]":s06o1ucv]Isn't this just a variation on the fact that eating junk food is a quick and effective way of (briefly) feeling happier? Because like it or not, junk food tastes good.

Trouble is, you then put on weight, which makes you feel down, which leads to you eating more junk food as a feel-good-quick solution, and a vicious cycle is born.

Edit: what I mean is, it's a factor of feeling down rather than any specific reason for feeling down. And people who aren't well off will have more reasons for not feeling great.

If that were true, I wouldn't expect considerations of where you stood on the social ladder to have much, if any, impact. Because everybody likes to be happy, not just the poor.

Not at all. The rich tend to have more to be happy about, and if not, then access to more resources with which to acquire such things, whereas the poor need to take what they can get and therefore things like junk food, provide a quick, easy, and most importantly cheap fix.

Edit: If anyone can think of a way to phrase that better so that it doesn't sound like something that Eric Cartman would say, go ahead and be my guest!

 

[Ronin007]

truthyboy15[/url]":3vx46le8]

Ronin007[/url]":3vx46le8]

SixDegrees[/url]":3vx46le8]If you're poor and don't know where or when your next meal might arrive, you'll binge in the present to counter a possible dearth of food in the future...

There's a couple of other things to consider:

1) Eating out costs more than preparing your own food, so perception of wealth comes into play. Perception with relation to peers by proximity.
2) Preparing your own food takes time and planning but when having roommates (more likely as income drops) - theft is an issue.
3) Those that do prepare meals, tend to make larger portions than they need to consume.
4) I've known some who will not eat leftovers

Satiety is just the matter of feeling full - nothing relating to caloric intake so it's a false/self-defeating indicator for diet. It will change as portions are changed to appropriate size.

I think your trying to compare eating at 5 star restaurants to eating at home which is absolutely asinine.

It's your strawman argument, not mine

 

[Ronin007]

isparavanje[/url]":3cd1sk36]

Ronin007[/url]":3cd1sk36]

SixDegrees[/url]":3cd1sk36]If you're poor and don't know where or when your next meal might arrive, you'll binge in the present to counter a possible dearth of food in the future...

There's a couple of other things to consider:

1) Eating out costs more than preparing your own food, so perception of wealth comes into play. Perception with relation to peers by proximity.
2) Preparing your own food takes time and planning but when having roommates (more likely as income drops) - theft is an issue.
3) Those that do prepare meals, tend to make larger portions than they need to consume.
4) I've known some who will not eat leftovers

Satiety is just the matter of feeling full - nothing relating to caloric intake so it's a false/self-defeating indicator for diet. It will change as portions are changed to appropriate size.

Do you have any statistics about people cooking more than they need, or is that just your own anecdotal observation? I definitely cook less than I need most of the time because I try to avoid leftovers and overdo it usually.

Ah yes, the demand for "proof" as though it makes a solid argument. Steeped in passive aggression, the discussion devolves into a red herring because the attacker can't really argue the points at hand. Even funnier that you'd accuse me of an anecdote, when you sign off with yours.

 

[wastrel]

SixDegrees[/url]":2i033nsi]

wastrel[/url]":2i033nsi]A hamburger isn't "junk" food, but you do want to stay away from high-sodium items--such as the cheese typically used on cheeseburgers (not that I'd ever truly refer to "American cheese" as cheese--of course, some of the buns hardly seem like bread nowadays).

If it's a hamburger from McD's, I'd have to disagree. Cheese or not, they taste like they've been literally dredged in salt, to the point where they became completely inedible for my tastes many years ago. I don't know if this was a change in the recipe, or a change in my palate, but I just can't eat any McD's burgers anymore. Just thinking about them makes me want to drink a gallon of water to restore my electrolyte balance.

Well, it is all about where less than what. (I haven't been there--or any other "fast food" place--in decades, though I used to go there often back in the '70s; their Quarter Pounders back then were the best burgers and fries you could buy.) Now, I make my own, and so I control the component ingredients, none of which is unhealthy, all of which are tasty.

 

[isparavanje]

Ronin007[/url]":33sgc8rh]

isparavanje[/url]":33sgc8rh]

Ronin007[/url]":33sgc8rh]

SixDegrees[/url]":33sgc8rh]If you're poor and don't know where or when your next meal might arrive, you'll binge in the present to counter a possible dearth of food in the future...

There's a couple of other things to consider:

1) Eating out costs more than preparing your own food, so perception of wealth comes into play. Perception with relation to peers by proximity.
2) Preparing your own food takes time and planning but when having roommates (more likely as income drops) - theft is an issue.
3) Those that do prepare meals, tend to make larger portions than they need to consume.
4) I've known some who will not eat leftovers

Satiety is just the matter of feeling full - nothing relating to caloric intake so it's a false/self-defeating indicator for diet. It will change as portions are changed to appropriate size.

Do you have any statistics about people cooking more than they need, or is that just your own anecdotal observation? I definitely cook less than I need most of the time because I try to avoid leftovers and overdo it usually.

Ah yes, the demand for "proof" as though it makes a solid argument. Steeped in passive aggression, the discussion devolves into a red herring because the attacker can't really argue the points at hand. Even funnier that you'd accuse me of an anecdote, when you sign off with yours.

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim (you); the anecdote is merely serving illustrative purposes (for example, I obviously don't fit into your claim). A claim without evidence, such as yours, is worthless. If you don't wish to provide any, so be it; it continues to be worthless then.

 

[AHvivere]

Grew up dirt ass poor, surviving off the old 2 for a dollar cheeseburger at McD's 25+ years ago. Learned to cook because of it, and now that I'm no longer dirt ass poor, I haven't eaten fast food in nearly 2 decades. So this article is pretty accurate from my standpoint.

 

[Fritzr]

AlexisR200X[/url]":2p2bqb7s]

MeghanAJH[/url]":2p2bqb7s]From the article -

"When researchers merely prompted study volunteers to consider themselves low-class, they were more likely to prefer, choose, and eat larger amounts of food, as well as higher-calorie foods. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, echo what’s been seen in a variety of animals—from birds and rodents to nonhuman primates."

What? How do you prompt a lab rat to consider itself low-class?

This begs the question, were this participants actually making choices based on class that they would make on their own or simply making choices they thought lower class folk wold make due to their own preconceived notions of what poor people eat?

Read the article ... they were choosing what they wanted. Separately they were asked to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10.

The study then compared food choices to self rating numbers to see if there was any correlation. The correlation found is that those who rated themselves lower also chose the less healthy options. The article does not indicate that the participants were coached or coerced so that they would answer in a way that would support the desired outcome. Instead they were offered food and what they ate was reported. The bowl of noodles was too much for one person and how much of that over-large portion was eaten was reported. They were given a form asking how they rated themselves relative to a stated class and their answer was reported.

The correlations occurred later when these reports were tabulated and cross referenced.

There are thousands of factors, genetic, social, cultural, environmental, financial, etc. This study just established that self perceived social status appears to be one of those factors. Once that is confirmed, then this factor can be independently studied, just as several genetic factors have already been identified and are being studied (those are also known to NOT be sole causes of obesity and food choice)

 

[Ronin007]

isparavanje[/url]":3na1vpi9]The burden of proof is on the person making the claim (you); the anecdote is merely serving illustrative purposes (for example, I obviously don't fit into your claim).

"Illustrative" is proof - your "counter-claim" is that because you - alone, personally - do not like leftovers, statements contrary must be invalid without footnotes.

It also demonstrates that in order for your counter-claim to work, I'd have had to claim the criteria as absolute - which I did not. I already called someone else on that fact of attempting a strawman argument...

A claim without evidence, such as yours, is worthless. If you don't wish to provide any, so be it; it continues to be worthless then.

I feel bad for those who would think like you do.

 

[isparavanje]

Ronin007[/url]":1b473q6g]

isparavanje[/url]":1b473q6g]The burden of proof is on the person making the claim (you); the anecdote is merely serving illustrative purposes (for example, I obviously don't fit into your claim).

"Illustrative" is proof - your "counter-claim" is that because you - alone, personally - do not like leftovers, statements contrary must be invalid without footnotes.

It also demonstrates that in order for your counter-claim to work, I'd have had to claim the criteria as absolute - which I did not. I already called someone else on that fact of attempting a strawman argument...

A claim without evidence, such as yours, is worthless. If you don't wish to provide any, so be it; it continues to be worthless then.

I feel bad for those who would think like you do.

You said very specifically: "Those that do prepare meals, tend to make larger portions than they need to consume."

You also did not provide any reason to believe so, and continue to provide no reason for it. Your claim is not worth anything more than the following claim I am making "The universe would probably collapse tomorrow".

Your claim requiring evidence has nothing to do with whether it is absolute. Something that you claim "tends to be true" still requires evidence.

There is no counter claim. A counter claim is only necessary if there was an argued claim in the first place; there wasn't. There was no argument, just a bunch of claims thrown out as premises, not as conclusions to any argument.

 

[0n3tw0]

So if a dude in a tuxedo and monocle looks down upon my restaurant entrance I'll be more likely to order the fried onion?