Is Technology to Blame for Our Fattened Country?

Ezra Klein has a column today in the WaPo’s Food section. In it he ponders, Is Technology a Friend or Foe to Food?

A 2003 study [link to abstract or purchase] by economists David Cutler, Ed Glaeser and Jesse Shapiro found that the rise in obesity over the past few decades could not be explained simply by food becoming cheaper or people consuming more meals in restaurants. It was the result of technological achievement.

The major differences in caloric intake aren’t due to larger meals. (In fact, there’s some evidence that we’re eating less at dinner than we used to.) The problem is we’re taking in more calories between meals, a direct consequence of technological innovation spurring the production of calorie-dense, long-lasting, shelf-stable foods. In 1977, Americans reported eating about 186 calories between meals. By 1994, that had rocketed to 346 calories. That difference alone is enough to explain the changes in our national waistline.

A century ago, getting dinner was a pretty simple affair: The wife cooked and the rest of the family ate. Those dinners, like today’s, were often big. But before the rise of vending machines and food preservation technology, snacks were harder to come by. If you wanted potato chips, you had to make them at home. No one had time for that, so fairly few people ate potato chips. The same went for many other foods. You ate what you made, or what a restaurant’s kitchen made. So you tended to eat at mealtimes.

Klein dismisses Michael Pollan’s recent call for us to spend more time in the kitchen cooking. He quotes economist Cutler saying, “The gift of time…is not to be returned lightly.” No, Klein’s inclined to believe that while technology has taken much of the good out of food, it can put it back:

You see some of that already: organic frozen dinners, food processors and freezers. You can easily imagine a diet that takes place entirely in the kitchen, de-emphasizes snacking and doesn’t involve much more time: Things are reheated, vegetables are precut, sauces are premade, cans of chicken broth are frequently opened and Uncle Ben’s rice is a constant companion.

It’s not the most delicious future imaginable, but it is one in which people are back in the kitchen, playing a direct role in the construction of their meals and getting comfortable with cookware. Making Hamburger Helper is a lot closer to cooking than going to McDonald’s. And the more demand there is for technologies that make cooking more accessible and less time-consuming, the more technologies there will be to do just that.

REMEMBER — Would You Eat A Stack of 16 Sugar Cubes? (Answer: you might!) In that post I quote a couple other economists on food. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler wrote a review of Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. A taste suggests portion size may be a factor. It’s trickier than we think:

People sat down to a large bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and were told to eat as much as they wanted. Unbeknown to them, the soup bowls were designed to refill themselves (with empty bottoms connected to machinery beneath the table). No matter how much soup the subjects ate, the bowl never emptied. Many people just kept eating until the experiment was (mercifully) ended.

The general rule seems to be, “Give them a lot, and they eat a lot.” Those who receive large bowls of ice cream eat much more than those who get small bowls. If you are given a half-pound bag of M&M’s, chances are that you will eat about half as much as you will if you are given a one-pound bag. The reason is simple: packages “suggest a consumption norm–what it is appropriate or normal to use or eat.” In fact, most people do not stop eating when they are no longer hungry. They look to whether their glasses or plates are empty.

Do any of us remember when soft drinks came in small sizes? Read on. Names matter, too, it turns out.