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from the would-that-be-a-BigMacViceBundle-with-lentils? dept.
From Vanderbilt University:
Variety may trump virtue when it comes to the struggle to eat healthy, says a Vanderbilt marketing professor who studies consumer self-control and endorses "vice-virtue bundles" combining nutritious and not-so-nutritious foods.
"We suggest a simple ... solution that can help consumers who would otherwise choose vice over virtue to simultaneously increase consumption of healthy foods (virtues) and decrease consumption of unhealthy foods (vices) while still fulfilling taste goals -- 'vice-virtue bundles,'" Kelly L. Haws, associate professor of management at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management, said.
The idea is to not give up entirely foods that provide pleasure but aren't nutritious. Instead, the focus should be on lowering the portion of the "vice" foods and correspondingly raising the portion of a healthy food to replace it.
In a series of experiments, Haws and her colleagues found that people have a "taste-health balance point" -- a proportion of vice and virtuous foods that make up one serving which they find satisfactory. For most, the perfect vice-virtue bundle is made up of a small (1/4) to medium (1/2) portion of vice. So if a vice-virtue bundle was made up of fries and slices of apple, it might take a small or very small serving of fries to satiate the need for the vice food.
The full paper is available as a PDF.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @12:02PM
You mean, like serving vegetables with the meat? As has been done since ... well, I'm not sure since when, but I'm sure the Romans already did it.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 13 2014, @12:42PM
They were big into grains and avoided the natural explosively fattening effects that stuff causes in all mammals by implementing periodic famines and keeping most of the population in poverty. All a grain based diet requires to maintain fitness and health is (self) imposed starvation.
Yes yes as a way to fatten livestock or make the rich richer or feed large armies (because militarism is good, right?) grain is just awesome. I'm only talking about how badly it sucks as a food for humans not its cultural effects or whatever.