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posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 13 2014, @03:02AM   Printer-friendly
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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Thursday August 14 2014, @02:34PM

    by fliptop (1666) on Thursday August 14 2014, @02:34PM (#81259) Journal

    You don't have sweet-n-sour pork, peppers, onions, garlic, spices, almond flour, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, a wok or chicken stock.

    Actually, I do. There's pork in my freezer and I always have the other ingredients mentioned. I've owned a wok since I moved out of my Dad's house.

    Your legs are tired from standing up all day and walking to the bus stop

    So I'll sit down in between stirs.

    Not to mention the freeway behind your house, giving you and your kids various health problems

    Not exactly sure what this has to do w/ the discussion. If my kids are not eating well then they have other health problems that I can address by feeding them good food.

    You probably don't have 50 minutes to do something as stressful as cooking

    If I eat fast food to "save time" then I'll need to allocate 50 minutes somewhere so I can work out and burn the fat my body just squirreled away from the meal.

    You make it sound so hopeless. If I'm in such bad financial shape that I must work two minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet, why the hell would I even think about having kids?

    --
    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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