Dr Rupy: And what you've found is that they were, they felt three times more satiated when they ate the milkshake that they thought was higher in calories, even though it was exactly the same shake. And so this is fascinating. It's not just that they reported feeling, but their body physiologically responded as if they had gotten a different product.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: How does our food environment dictate our health? Well, as it turns out, it is incredibly important. I mean, can you believe that in the 1950s and 60s, Americans had comparable obesity levels to the Europeans? And what shifted their diets and ultimately their waistlines is a number of factors, including public policy and nutrition, yes, but also the food environment, including portion sizing and the sheer number of choices involved in food consumption. And we have quite a few stories about those different portion sizing and what actually triggered that in the 1950s. And to talk with me about it today is Jack Bobo. He is the author of a brilliant book called Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices. You can find it on Amazon and in all good bookstores online. He is also the CEO of Futurity, a food foresight company that advises companies, foundation and governments on emerging food trends, consumer attitudes and behaviours related to the future of food. He is very, very well researched in this subject matter and he's even been recognised by Scientific American as one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology. He is a thought leader and previously served as the chief communications officer and senior vice president for global policy and government affairs at Intrexon Corporation, and he also worked at the US Department of State for 13 years as senior advisor for global food policy. Like I said, he knows his stuff. Today, we're going to be talking about information overload in the grocery aisles and whether food labels actually do more harm than good, how decision fatigue affects your ability to eat well, as well as how you can work around these nuances. Why what you believe you could be eating can have a powerful, measurable physiological effect. This is a study that blew my mind called the milkshake study. Choice architecture, which is basically about how we can design deliberate food landscapes that deliver specific outcomes and why we would obviously want to design environments that deliver health outcomes. And also what we can learn from the infamous Google canteens that can be applied to the outside world. And trust me, I've been to these Google canteens and they are wonderful places, but I can imagine if I was working at Google for a long extended period of time, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from eating all the wonderful delicious food. So it's really interesting to see what they've done there and how Jack is advising them too. You're going to love this episode if you're interested in the blue sky thinking of how we design better food environments with the objective of empowering people to live healthier, happier lives. And as always, you can find all the information about the TED talks that we mentioned, plus my guest's books and socials, all on the podcast show notes at thedoctorskitchen.com. And when you're there, you can sign up to the newsletter Eat, Read, Watch, where I share three things that I think are going to help you live a healthier, happier life, whether it's something to eat, whether it's something to listen to, whether it's a talk on gratitude, whether it's a video that makes you laugh, something that will lift your spirit as well as nourish your bellies. On to the podcast.
Dr Rupy: Well, before we dive into the topic, why smart people make bad food choices, I want to know a bit more about yourself. I mean, you've had like quite an incredible career. You mentioned at the start of some of your written work about how much you've travelled and experienced different food systems and spoken to a number of different organisations across Europe and Asia. Tell us a bit about yourself.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, well, I grew up in a small town in Southern Indiana, which is big farm country, mostly cornfields. We weren't in farming, but my family, we had a family garden, but it wasn't like gardens today. We had corn and peppers and green beans and cantaloupes and watermelon and tomatoes and, we basically my mother canned everything. I tell people we were basically subsistence farmers and it was all organic because we had child labour, which was me and my brothers. But I didn't really think of that as farming because I knew what a real farm looked like. And it wasn't really until years later that I looked back on that and I thought, wow, you know, that was actually a pretty unusual experience and I was much closer to food and agriculture than I realised, you know, at the time and for actually many years later. But that was my introduction to food. I mean, I never really thought that I would end up working in the food sector having done that growing up. But what my real interest was, you know, is global environmental issues. You know, I spent two years in Africa in the Peace Corps and, you know, sort of left with this passion for how do we protect the world's forests. And that led me to the US Department of State where I quickly realised instead of working on sort of environmental policy, I should be working on agriculture policy because the biggest driver of all the problems I was concerned about was agriculture. And so if we could fix agriculture, we could the other problems would just go away.
Dr Rupy: And did you do that for the majority of your career, would you say, in your roles in the in the US system?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so, you know, my studies were environmental science and law and biology and chemistry and psychology and stuff. But I spent 13 years at the US Department of State. So a few years covering Africa food policy, then Asia food policy, then Europe food policy. Then I ran our global biotechnology programme. And then my last few years, my only job was giving speeches. So I had the unlimited travel budget. I could go anywhere in the world and just talk about the future of food, the role of science and how do we better communicate. So good preparation for this.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. And where would you say have you seen some of the best practices considering so much international experience that you have?
Jack Bobo: Well, you know, there there are lessons almost anywhere you go. You know, you can find things that people are doing right. You know, unfortunately, there there are so many things that are being done wrong. But what I was really left with was the the impression that things aren't as bad as most people think. You know, we tend to look at deforestation and we, you know, obviously that's a problem and we look at eutrophication of waterways and that's a problem. But we forget where we've come from. And so just give you an example, you know, agriculture in the United States, to produce a bushel of corn, we produce 35% fewer greenhouse gases today than we did in 1980 to produce it. We use 40% less land, we have 50% less water and there's 60% less erosion to produce that food. And that would be true of every single crop. So things are actually wildly better than they were in the past. The problem is we're producing a lot more food and so you just see the problems, you don't see like how much better they are. And, you know, that's true everywhere. You know, if we were farming today with 1960s technology, we would need 1 billion additional hectares of land, which is more than a quarter of all the forest on the planet. So, you know, you don't see forests that didn't get cut down, you know, you only, you know, think about the ones that do.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And not to get too off topic here, but I guess most people are coming around to the idea about um, uh, the the differences in climate change, the increasing temperatures, a lot of which can be attributed to agriculture, whether it be the transportation, whether it be the methods of agriculture. But like you, like you just said, the the the way in which we produce food is actually a little bit more efficient, a lot more efficient than it was. So is it purely down to the amount of food that we're having to produce and is there an imbalance between what we are producing versus how much we need?
Jack Bobo: Well, you know, there there are trade-offs. So, you know, we do produce, you know, like three times as much food as we did, you know, back in the 60s, but, you know, population has increased and people's incomes have increased and so, you know, food demand has risen faster than, you know, population alone. And so without that productivity gain and those production gains, you know, we wouldn't have gone from a third of all the people on the planet going to bed hungry 50 or 60 years ago to less than 10% today. So certainly 800 million people going to bed hungry is a problem, but, you know, things are not bad and getting worse, they're good and getting better, but not fast enough. And that's a very different framing of the problem. Because are farmers the problem to be solved or the solution to the problem? And how you talk about it determines whether people work with you or work against the solutions you're trying to provide. And that's that's sort of through the stuff that we're going to talk about as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Actually, you remind me of one of the links that you suggested that I haven't actually watched yet, the the TED talk by the statistician who talks about actually how much better things have have become over the last couple of decades compared to what we're bombarded with via the media being, you know, we've only got 60 years left of of harvest land, you know, everything is full of pesticides, etc, etc. So it gives a like a cloud over our food system that actually in reality is actually much more improved than it was. Um, and, you know, we're we're sort of pin-picking, we're nit-picking at certain things that certainly need to improve, but are certainly not the the main story.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, Hans Rosling, you know, he's great. Um, you know, obviously he's passed away now, but his book Factfulness, you know, is something that, you know, people should read because it doesn't hide the problems, but I think it gives us hope. And today, I think that some of the problems still feel so overwhelming that it can lead people to despair that, you know, nothing they do matters, when in fact, everything they do matters and if we all do it, things will be just fine.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, um, let's talk about the body of work that you've you've put into this book, right? So, you know, my impression of the book is it's basically about how we can work with our natural impulses and knowledge of human psychology, heuristics, biases and everything else to address public health concerns. And the one that we are addressing today is obviously healthy food choices and lifestyle choices. And there is a quote in the book that I had to write down because it just spoke to me so much. It's, in an increasingly interconnected and complicated world, the willingness to revise our views is more critical than ever. And I've actually been talking about this with a few colleagues and some other people that work in the sort of realm of social media because it feels that we've lost the ability to hold two conflicting ideas at once. And you're either on one camp or you're in another. And you see that play out quite clearly in in diet wars. Um, but this context, this concept of intellectual humility is fascinating for me. I wonder if we could talk a bit about that.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, you know, and you know, that's how I lead off the book because I want people to approach this with a sense of, you know, wonder and learning and excitement. And, you know, too often we we approach things that, you know, maybe we're not sure that we agree with with such a sceptical look that we end up, you know, deciding that we're not going to support it or we're not going to change our mind before we've even really given it a chance. And, you know, I think that that's really important because we're not going to make any big improvements if we don't change the mindset with which we approach the problem. And, you know, it's the the old thing, the thinking that got us into the problem is not going to get us out of the problem. And, you know, that that's difficult for people changing their minds about something that's like really important to their core values. You know, we just don't do that as often as I think, you know, we wish we would. You know, we all think we're open-minded, but then, you know, we really can't even remember the last time we changed our minds.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually, when you wrote that, I was like, I don't actually know the last time I've I've changed my mind on something in the last six or 12 months. Nothing really like, I mean, can you think of anything?
Jack Bobo: Um, you know, maybe not six or 12 months, but, you know, I I came, one of the big things that sort of does go to my core, you know, I spent a lot of time working on biotechnology and genetically modified crops and and I was very focused on, you know, we need to increase yields because I was focused on the people in Africa and other places that just didn't have enough food. And I felt like things like organic food were just a bit of a luxury. And, you know, they tend to be less productive because you're not using as many inputs, you know, which is not surprising. And so I felt like it wasn't really a solution and it was a distraction from some of the things. And over time, I've actually come to understand the role and the place of something like organic. And what I found fascinating when I realised was that they're solving problems in ways that the big food system never would. And because of that, they came up with things like cover crops, planting crops between growing season because they sort of believed in their hearts it was the right thing to do. But then big data came along and proved them right. And so I realised that, you know, maybe 95% of agriculture shouldn't be organic, but it's a really good thing that 5% of agriculture is organic because our system is more resilient because of its diversity. And so, you know, that was something that was like, you know, I spent a lot of time talking about these issues and, um, so it was a big wake up for me that, you know, I had had, you know, I was too focused as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. That that's actually a really good point because I used to think that about um, yield versus the quality of the crops and crop rotations. And I'm still very uh, infant in my understanding of regenerative agriculture, but I feel like it might be the intuitive and the pragmatic way to go. Do you have an opinion on the region movement?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, well, so there are two different versions of regenerative agriculture. There is the organic plus where it's like even more, you know, hard to do. And, you know, if organic's 5% of agriculture and regen is only 1% of that 5%, well, it's never going to have an impact, you know, because it's just too small unless the idea scale. Um, the other view of regen is that our sort of bigger intensive farms should be measuring their outputs and providing metrics to make sure they're getting better. And that they should worry about soil health and water quality and all these things instead of just yield. Um, you know, I think that that has a lot of role to play. I I generally think of it in terms of local sustainability versus global. And local is what consumers think about, less water, less fertiliser, less pesticides equals good, but it also means less production, which means more land, which means more deforestation. On the other hand, intensive agriculture means more nutrient runoff and it's worse for that piece of land, but we need fewer pieces of land. And so, um, sort of global sustainability is sort of bad for the land, but good for the planet. And local sustainability is good for that land, but not as good for the planet. And they're just trade-offs between the two. So we shouldn't think of one as good and one is bad. We should think about where should we be using one and where should we be using the other.
Dr Rupy: We're going to come to this in a bit about um, decision fatigue. But considering you know so much about the food landscape, I'm really intrigued as to how you personally shop and how you choose vegetables and and and eat yourself. Like what what is your what are your shopping habits like considering you know so much about this?
Jack Bobo: Well, you know, my wife and I, we we tend to cook a lot. You know, we have the luxury of being able to do that. Um, and, you know, we go and we buy lots of fruits and vegetables and, you know, we we've spent a lot of time sort of, you know, learning to make those vegetables better, you know, and how to to do that. And so I'm sort of constantly thinking about, you know, what can we do to make it easier for us to do it. So like I'm a huge proponent of like frozen and canned and other things because, you know, we we shouldn't stigmatise those things because we know that the nutrients in frozen can be as nutritious, if not more than than fresh. And so I'm worried that, you know, by saying, you know, it's like, oh, I always cook fresh, uh, or use fresh fruits and vegetables that I'm stigmatising the other stuff. And for many people, you know, it's just easier to use frozen or, you know, that it fits within their budget or other things. And so I'm I don't want to be elitist in how I approach it, you know, just because I have some luxuries that not everybody does. Um, but, you know, for me, it's, you know, it's spending the time, you know, I worked with my kids, you know, we always cook together and, uh, hopefully that's something that they'll take with them as they head off into the world.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, definitely. I mean, that really resonates with me because I think even though I have the luxury of um, going to a farmer's market every Saturday, that is literally down the road from me, or having multiple options plus the mechanism to have groceries delivered to me in 15 minutes because I'm in the centre of London, you know, it doesn't mean that I'm uh, I have to make time trade-offs as well. So if I'm coming back from work and it's late, I always have stuff in my freezer, whether it's peas, whether it's sweet corn, whether it's berries, whether it's, you know, canned foods as well as the stuff in jars and ferments and stuff like that. Um, because you need to be able to cook nutritious food on the go as well. And you're right, you know, we don't want to marginalise or stigmatise people who don't have those luxuries. But it's just interesting to to find out how people shop themselves, considering they sort of work and they live in this this arena.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we we need to meet people where they are and then help them to be their better selves.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, okay, cool. So on information overload, let's let's define some of the concepts that we're going to be talking about. So I've mentioned uh, heuristics, cognitive biases and confirmation bias that that sort of uh, are constant themes that come throughout the book. Maybe we should define exactly what those those three things actually mean.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so a heuristic is, you know, just a way that we solve common problems that allows us to sort of short circuit the thinking process. Um, you know, we don't want to always have to think long and hard. You know, so it's like when you get in the car and you sort of arrive at your office and you you can't even really remember how you got there, but your mind was on automatic pilot. So heuristics are like these automatic pilots that make decisions for us every day. And a cognitive bias is sort of when those heuristics go wrong and they they lead to a consistent but incorrect outcome. And, you know, perhaps the one that people know the most is confirmation bias, the idea that we seek out information that's consistent with our beliefs and we sort of discount information that's inconsistent. Uh, but I suspect for most people, we are incredibly good at identifying bias in others and we are remarkably bad at identifying bias in ourselves.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm uh, certainly more aware of my confirmation bias over the last couple of years because I can feel it in myself. It's like I get a dopamine rush whenever I read an article that confirms my ideas about how we should um, you know, change our food landscape for the betterment of human health. So whenever I read an article that is saying something positive about an ingredient or a particular dietary type, whether it's the Mediterranean diet or, you know, a new RCT, my brain is lighting up. I mean, my brain was probably lighting up as I was reading your book actually. But uh, but you know, that that's just like lighting up my my confirmation biases. If I see something that's negative or neutral, I'm more inclined to discard it or, you know, just just not bring that on board, whereas I'm trying to train myself to be better at that. Um, and I think it's just, you know, the effect of of uh, of wanting to to help people as much as possible and and, you know, have something positive to say about stuff.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so when I'm, you know, speaking to audiences, I do a lot of public speaking, I I give my an example of my own bias, you know, and I'll use the example of organic. I said, you know, if I read an article that said organic is more nutritious than conventional agriculture, what would I do? I'd ask, who are the authors, who funded the research, and what was their methodology? Pretty reasonable things to do. On the other hand, if the article had said organic, no more nutritious than conventional, what would I have done? Tweeted it. Right? Because it's consistent with what I believe. I'm sure their methodology is fine, you know, these guys seem totally legit. And and that's the difference. I mean, you it seems perfectly reasonable to ask those questions and yet you don't of the things that agree with you.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So heuristics are really interesting, right? So they're sort of like uh, rule of thumbs, things that you just automatically do. Um, you pick something up that's on sale, for example, or uh, you you have a heuristic that a Volvo is the most reliable car, whatever that might be, uh, uh, defined by.
Jack Bobo: An example of that would be like the availability heuristic. So like when somebody says a word, what things come to mind. So when I say the word natural, you know, you're thinking butterflies and rainbows and puppies, you're not thinking Ebola and E. coli and salmonella, which are all perfectly natural as well. And so we all just go to a happy place when we hear the word natural, even though it doesn't actually mean anything in a food context.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in the context of decision fatigue, um, our the the sort of more decisions we make, the worse our judgment becomes. And and this is particularly uh, relevant in the context of a modern supermarket where you're bombarded by lots of different options as well as the information on said options as well, whether it's like you said, natural or plant-based or low fat. So how do we avoid this this uh, situation that is so common and occurs every single day or every single time someone goes into the store?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so, uh, decision fatigue is a subset of mental fatigue. And so just when we're tired, we make bad decisions. So that could be at the end of a long day, you know, after picking up the kids, you know, all of these things, you know, we're tired. And so on top of that, you know, then the more decisions you have to make when you're tired, they're going to get even worse. And there's just no place where you have to make more decisions than a grocery store. A grocery store today has literally tens of thousands more products than a grocery store in 1980. So, you know, it's it's the situation has gotten so much worse than it ever was before. And, you know, so you're going through and you're, you know, you're trying to make decisions and and then if you're sort of higher income, you know, maybe you're just choosing the Parmigiano Reggiano and it's, you know, it's easy. But, you know, if you're on a fixed food budget, you know, it's like, oh, or do I choose the craft or do I choose the store brand, you know, there are actually a lot more things you have to figure out. And so you're in a worse financial position and you're even, you know, tougher. So there are a lot of common things, I think, you know, we can do. There there's the, you know, don't, you know, go in the morning, you know, before you're tired, go with a list to ensure that the things that you buy, um, shop around the edges where, you know, there's maybe more whole fresh foods and less of the processed foods. Uh, so that's one half of it. The other half though is what is the grocery store doing to shape the choices I make? And I think we spend very little time thinking about that. But, you know, why is there candy at the checkout? Well, you're tired now, you're going to grab one. Um, you know, why are there things on the end caps? Uh, you know, how has the design of the grocery store been laid out? Is it to maximize the healthfulness of the basket of food I buy or is it to maximize the profit of the grocery store? Now, you can't really blame people for for choosing the latter. Um, but in the UK right now, you know, you have grocery stores that actually redesigning their layout and have demonstrated they can increase by 10 or 15% the amount of uh, fruits and vegetables that people buy just by changing the layout. And, you know, that's a fantastic thing because consumers don't even know that they're changing. They're just walking out of the store with a better basket of goods.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I you know, it's interesting to see more uh, big-time retailers move into this wellness space. And I I've read a few consumer reports looking at how much investment is going into uh, layouts and redesigning um, supermarket stores with the with the exact um, uh, um, outcome that you're that you're describing there, where you're putting more fruits and vegetables into the baskets and you're having less processed foods. It's I think we always need a bit of a healthy scepticism of all these different practices because at the end of the day, they are there to profit maximize and one of the easiest ways to do that is on the high margin items which happen to be more processed as a rule of thumb. Um, so I guess like, you know, one of the things that we need to do is also educate the consumer like you said about how to navigate the complex world of a supermarket shop. I I read this book by um, Barry Schwartz, I think it was published a few years ago called The Paradox of Choice. And it's about this um, uh, paradox of how, you know, we've got even more choices, yet we actually are unhappy uh, and we have less uh, pleasure from the shopping experience. Is that is that in in in part due to decision fatigue in your opinion?
Jack Bobo: Uh, yeah, I mean, I think they're related. Uh, but, you know, the idea that just when we have too many choices, we feel like we may be making the wrong one. And so that that's a little different than decision fatigue. Uh, but the two, you know, combine to one, we're less happy and we're making worse decisions. So it, you know, again, it's sort of the worst of all worlds. And, you know, this is a lot of the things that I'm tackling in the book is, how do we maximize our joy and, you know, pleasure in food and be healthy at the same time? And so I think both of those concepts are critically important.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Um, you you mentioned uh, a study in the book. Um, I I can't remember the the exact name of the study who did it, but I just wrote it down as the milkshake study where it described what we believe uh, about the food that we're about to consume. Uh, and just that belief system is super powerful for uh, how satiated we are afterwards or what we feel about it or how much we enjoyed it. Can can you can you uh, speak to that a bit?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, you know, everybody should have a favourite research study, right? That like, and mine, the name of the article is Mind Over Milkshakes, uh, which is the the chapter of the book and it's by Dr. Alia Crum, uh, who has a TED talk in which she actually talks about this. And, you know, the the amazing thing was that, you know, I think we all know that there's a lot of research that shows like if you put low fat on a label and ask consumers to, you know, evaluate it, they will not enjoy it as much, even if it isn't low fat. So the thought that it could be diminishes the experience. Um, you know, this happens with, you know, sodium in soup. If you tell people you've reduced the sodium, they just won't like it as much, even if it actually tastes in blind taste tests just as good. Uh, but she wanted to test something different. So she gave a group of people a milkshake that was, you know, a sense shake. It was a sensible shake that had, you know, like 150 calories. And then at the same time, they measured the ghrelin level to sort of see how did the body respond to that. And so then the the same people came back a week later and this time they got this indulgent shake, you know, they had like 650 calories. And they again measured the the levels of, you know, the hormone that, you know, indicates sort of when you begin to to digest your food and how full you are, satiation. And what she found is that they were, they felt three times more satiated when they ate the milkshake that they thought was higher in calories, even though it was exactly the same shake. And so this is fascinating. It's not just that they like they reported feeling, but their body physiologically responded as if they had gotten a different product. And this, I think, is critical because you you begin to realise that this happens every day. Like you eat the the low, the Weight Watchers meal. Well, your body is probably not going to respond as if you had enough calories, even if you do. And so, like all the things we do in order to like cut back and, you know, be healthier, our body is physiologically not responding in the way that we would hope that it would. And so you almost have to trick your body into thinking that it's not eating healthier, but being healthier. And so it it creates all these uh, interesting questions of how food companies can help us and how we can help ourselves.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love that. So the the framing uh, of food and how you describe said food is super important when it comes to how satiated you feel and that's kind of one of the reasons why whenever I do my my cookbooks and stuff, I'm I'm really cautious about how the title uh, invites the user to want to cook the dish rather than cook it out of, you know, wanting to be puritanical. So instead of me uh, calling a chickpea dish, you know, healthy, low-fat chickpea dish, I'm going to be saying, you know, this is masala infused with rose petals and harissa or whatever else I put in there. So it sounds indulgent, the image looks indulgent and you actually want to eat it and it has those health benefits baked into it, even if you don't, if you're not consciously aware of it.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, I mean, and that that's really important is the mindset. And, you know, that that's really what she's getting at as well. I mean, there's been interesting research that if people think that they're uh, getting exercise, their body actually begins to improve its health levels as well. And so she talks about that in her uh, TED talk as well that, you know, uh, and there they look at, you know, housekeepers who are like on their feet all day and, um, when they're told that it's like, well, no, that's actually exercise, then their blood pressure actually goes down and all of these things associated with exercise, um, you know, improve, even though their behaviour didn't change, it's their mindset that changed about the work they do.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I mean, that stuff just blows my mind about the power of uh, just how you're communicating uh, whatever it might be, the activity, the food you're consuming, the milkshake, and and how that has a dramatic effect on the end result. I think, um, you know, there's definitely something in there beyond the placebo effect. Uh, and and if it has that beneficial outcome, that's something that we really need to look into, I guess, when it comes to designing food landscapes.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr Rupy: Another story um, that I I I loved it. I mean, it was full of stories the book. It was great. There's so many that I'd love to chat about, but um, the uh, the the rise of jumbo popcorn, how America has like huge portion sizes and and how that kind of stems from the popcorn uh, uh, element. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about that.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, I mean, I was really surprised that our penchant for, you know, jumbo sizes all goes back to the mad genius of one man, David Wallerstein, back in the 1960s. And he was working for a movie theatre chain and his job was to get people to eat more popcorn and more concessions and he tried two for one deals and all sorts of things and he just couldn't get people to come back and buy a second bag. And then he finally hit on it, well, what if people are embarrassed to go back for a second bag? You know, I might look gluttonous to my friends and my neighbours and people are watching. And so that's when he offered the jumbo size and of course, sales took off, but also sales of soda and other things. And, you know, everything changed. And of course, what really changed was then he later went on to work for McDonald's Corporation and he had this conversation with Ray Kroc and he's like, hey, you need to offer larger sizes. And Ray Kroc's like, nah, people want a second bag of fries, they'll just go buy a second bag of fries. And they went back and forth and it wasn't until 1972 that he finally convinced Ray Kroc that they should offer a large-sized fry. And of course, the rest is history.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, it's and and there's a chart, I think, that basically chronicles just how big the portions have become over 50 or 60 years. And I, you know, I remember vividly going to America when I was a child with my my mum, my dad, my sister, and we went to the buffet. Um, and the the portions that uh, they would give us, I mean, I mean, the size of the plates and everything were just absolutely massive um, when we ordered off menu as well as on the buffet as well. And so it's kind of been baked into my psychology that Americans uh, eat just generally larger portions, but how recent that trend was, I I didn't actually, I didn't uh, I didn't know that.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, and you mean you look at some of the data and, you know, back before the 1970s, obesity rates in the United States were lower than in many places in Europe. You know, it's just things have changed dramatically and, you know, within a lifetime.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. So, so that in a sense is again, some extra information about how um, the food landscape really does dictate the health and well-being of the population. So now now we can talk a bit more about um, some examples of deliberate food landscape uh, architecture and how that can impact um, people's choices. It's sort of this this concept of liberal paternalism that uh, everyone might have heard about through the the the book Nudge that you recommend in there uh, in your book as well. Why don't we look at Google as an example? Because I think that's a fantastic testing ground for for people to to uh, to to know a bit more about how this can be put into action.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, and you know, just let me mention that, you know, part of what brought me to this question was, you know, I was really confused as to why is it, you know, at a time when we know more about health and nutrition than we ever have in the history of the planet and we've never been more obese. And we have more healthy food options in a grocery store than we've ever had and we've never been more obese. So it's like if you have more information and you have more access, something's like really strange going on. And, you know, it's not like we had more willpower in the past than we do today. You know, in 1960, you know, our parents were cooking with lard, you know, so it's like, and yet somehow nobody was obese. And so, you know, it's not that one thing has changed, it's that everything has changed. And, you know, one company that is really sort of at the cutting edge of applying behavioural science is Google. And, you know, we don't think of Google in terms of food, but, you know, they have a couple hundred thousand employees around the world and before COVID, they were feeding them one, two or three meals a day and they were giving free food to them and it's like some of the best food in the world, you know, just. And what happened is that they were one of the first, you know, tech companies to offer this luxury good food and it led to the Google 15, you know, people started gaining weight, which, wow, you know, you give people free food and snacks and somehow they're gaining weight. What a remarkable discovery. Um, but they wanted to do something about it. And so they started trying to figure out, well, you know, we don't want to take away the snacks and we don't want to, you know, not give away the food. So what could we do? And, you know, they began to sort of play with this idea of behavioural science. Well, what if we took the M&Ms and we put them in opaque containers? So, you know, that just makes it a little harder to, you know it's there, but you might not grab it. What if we take the sodas and instead of putting them in front of through clear glass, we put them behind frosted glass and in a lower refrigerator. Um, and we put the small water and everything all around so people can get it. What if when they go to the coffee station, instead of turning around and grabbing a snack while your coffee's brewing, we move it 20 feet away. And now that's a little too far to walk while your coffee's there. So people just reduce their snacking. And so they did all of these different nudges, um, you know, the buffet line. Well, let's start with the vegetables and, you know, by the time you get to, you know, the desserts or the meat or other things, your plate is hopefully full and, you know, it's a smaller plate and instead of offering four desserts a day, well, what if we just offer one? You know, it's like, so they they're applying and then they're measuring it all. And, you know, that's what's, you know, because that's what Google does best is, you know, so now they've got big data. And so while not every company has the ability to do all of these things, um, they're able to then share that information with the world. So they've worked with the uh, Yale Center for consumer uh, customer insights, uh, they have worked with Compass Group, which is like one of the largest food service companies in the world. And so then Compass can take those ideas to the hospitals and schools and corporate cafeterias around the world and apply those lessons on how to nudge people to uh, have healthier outcomes. And it's it's pretty exciting, you know, how you can take ideas, test them and iterate, you know, because that's what's important, you know, they've done, you know, 100 years of research in the last decade because, you know, they've got the ability to to test things more quickly.
Dr Rupy: I wonder if those um, elements of uh, deliberate food landscape architecture uh, are directly transferable to different environments. So, you know, we're mentioning Google and I think everyone's got this idea of the Google canteen of just being full of academics and coders and, you know, incredible uh, mathematicians, which there are. I remember going to the Google canteen, the one in Ireland, and it was amazing. I could get everything, Indian food, British, American food, whatever I wanted, it was there. It was amazing. Um, but that's a specific sort of uh, subset of the population. I wonder how malleable uh, or nudgeable other people are in different environments, like like children's schools, public arenas, that sort of thing. Is it is it directly transferable? Do we do we know about any data from that?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, and it it is transferable. And I mean, a lot of the reason they're doing it at Google is because there was already good research to suggest that these things work. So, you know, placement in, you know, the cafeteria, you know, what comes first, what comes last, what's at eye level, what's not, where is the salad bar? Um, you know, so there had been research that had been done in lots of different areas. And so, yeah, it's definitely um, applicable to to many parts of our lives and it's applicable to our own home as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, actually, I was going to ask you about your own home because, you know, whilst we're waiting for supermarkets to do that here in the UK or in different areas, or we're waiting for the National Health Service to stop pushing around the uh, the the trolley with all the snacks and stuff in it in patient waiting rooms that really infuriates me whenever I'm working. Um, what can we do in our own homes that can uh, essentially create a healthier nudging environment that that optimizes for for lifestyle change and protects against more unhealthy options?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so, you know, if you don't buy a snack, you won't eat it. And so if it's not in the home, uh, you know, if you buy the snack, you know, leave it in the cupboard, uh, you know, behind closed doors, don't leave it on the countertop. If you leave it on the countertop, put it inside a jar. You know, so there there are just different things you can do along to add just a little bit of friction to the process. And so it's not about denying yourself, you know, pleasures. You know, in fact, it's just the opposite. It's allow to allow us to enjoy our indulgences without guilt because they're not contributing to an unhealthy outcome. They're part of a healthy and nutritious diet. And so there there are the little things. And, you know, we we talk about smaller plates and smaller plates can work. The problem is that, you know, if there's there's dissonance if you're using, you know, a 9-inch or a 7-inch plate at home and then you go to the restaurant and it's a 13-inch plate. So then all of a sudden the plate at home doesn't feel like it's big enough. So that's where as many things as we can do at home, they're not going to work as well as they could if they're not consistent in the different places that we eat. And so that's why a lot of these ideas need to transition to restaurants and and get them on board with helping to support our healthier outcomes. And it's not that I blame the restaurants, you know, we go back to restaurants that give us big portions. You know, we don't go to restaurants that, you know, we feel are skimping with their food. Um, but if we could find a way to work with the restaurant and, you know, I often use Cheesecake Factory as an example. Because here in the US, they're known for enormous portion sizes. But, you know, what if you went into the restaurant and you said, you know, I'd like half of that to go. And so when they serve you the food, they give you your to-go bag and you never, you don't have to clear your plate, you don't have to put half of it aside. You know, and that way you can finish your plate. And that's important so your your brain thinks, I finished my meal. If you only eat half the food, your brain is not going to respond as if you're done eating. And so you're going to be hungry, you know, two hours later, even though you ate more than enough food. And so we, you know, we need to find ways of uh, you know, making sure that you get consistent messages in different places, uh, because we need that kind of reinforcement for these things to become habits.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. One of the best things that I've done in terms of choice architecture for my own kitchen and home is making sure that I always have uh, something in the freezer that's already pre-made. So, uh, me and my partner will will make like a big ragu uh, at the weekend or like a bean soup or something that is very easily portioned out into um, uh, containers that are freezable. And so if I'm coming back late and I have that temptation, oh, I could just get a takeout or, oh, I could just get one of the like a ready meal or something that is, you know, healthier ready meal or whatever, there is always that temptation, even someone like me who loves to cook and loves to, you know, put things together. When you're that tired, you're going to default to the the easiest option, which generally happens to be the unhealthy one. So having that in my freezer kind of gives me a backup, um, and it just reduces the barriers to consistently eating a way that is in line with my health goals.
Jack Bobo: Yeah, food prep is great, you know, doing things on the weekends if you have more time. Uh, and but then there's also just recognising that often when we get up and we go for a snack, we're not doing it because we're hungry, we're doing it because we're bored. And, you know, sort of that awareness of it's like I'm wandering through the kitchen, you know, it's like, you know, do you really need something to eat or could you go for a walk or maybe you need to read a book or read the newspaper? Uh, so much of it, you know, isn't about the food itself, it's about the activity and, you know, that habits, you know, are important instead of walking to the kitchen, you know, you walk out the front door and and that can help as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know it's unfair to compare um, the unhealthy food uh, choices that we have to smoking, uh, because, you know, food is more about culture and, you know, our memories and obviously it's a it's a source of enjoyment and something that's healthy. But it can have those detrimental impacts if we are eating in an unhealthy manner for a long period of time. But in terms of what's had the biggest impact on reducing smoking rates, would you say it is the packet warnings or the removal of ads or the fact that it's banned in public spaces? What what do you think across the spectrum of different activities that we put in at a governmental level had the biggest impact on and smoking? And is there anything that we can learn about that practice to how we can create healthier options for for people in the environment in terms of food?
Jack Bobo: Yeah, so I would say that, you know, the the warnings on the package haven't had as much of an impact just because, you know, if you smoke and you see, you know, there's some countries where they'll have like the diseased lungs or something like that, you know, which is just awful, is that, you know, somebody looks at that and if they continue to smoke, they have to sort of convince themselves that that's not them. And so it's like we're we're very good at ignoring information that we don't want to. Um, but I do think that making it a little bit harder to smoke in public places or making it less socially acceptable, you know, ultimately has a big impact on on what people do. And that's, you know, why many people, even smokers, just don't even smoke in their own homes anymore, um, because they have taken on this idea themselves. It's it's very different with food. Um, and I think we need to be very cautious about doing something that stigmatises the people, um, that, you know, may be overweight, uh, because, you know, it's society and culture and other things that are leading to these outcomes. And, you know, so we don't want to stigmatise the people. What we might stigmatise or, you know, focus more on the restaurants that are providing the bigger portions, but not to stigmatise them either, because, you know, people come back because of that. But we need to work with them. So I think the solutions are going to be quite different. Um, you know, raising the price of cigarettes, I'm sure that that had an impact on many. Um, but raising the price of food is very different, you know, because, you know, it would be a regressive tax, it would hit the poorest people the most. And it's not that simple. You know, there have been a lot of efforts to like focus on soda taxes. And, you know, which, you know, does anybody need half a gallon of soda? Probably not. On the other hand, soda consumption in America is at a 30-year low. So it feels like that's must be a big part of the problem. But then when you dig into the numbers, it's like, well, should consumption is actually going in the other direction and that's already a societal trend. You know, maybe you can accelerate that. But if we're getting, you know, more and more obese and we're eating less and less sugar, are we tackling the right problem or tackling it in the right way? And so I think, you know, there are definitely questions as to whether or not those are going to deliver the outcomes that we want. And ultimately it's about making people healthier, not, you know, just undermining or stigmatising unhealthy food because, you know, there is in the sense, there's no unhealthy food, there's just unhealthy diets. Um, because, you know, you can eat anything you want if it's part of a healthy diet and you would be just fine.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. We we we've spoken about um, obesity in a couple of podcasts actually. And I think one of the the issues uh, in terms of stigmatising people who are overweight is a lack of awareness of just how many other factors beyond excess calorie diets can impact someone's likelihood of being obese and struggling to lose weight as well. So, uh, you know, there are genetic factors, there are gender factors, there are even some viruses that have been identified as having an impact on one's ability to partition fuel, um, as well as the microbiota and, you know, the the list goes on. So there's a there's a number of reasons why we need to better educate the general public and and as to why obesity is an issue in today's day and age. And I think the the other side of that is um, is is really looking at uh, ways in which to design environments where the healthy options are the default, which you've talked about a lot in your book. And I I just wonder, you know, you've you've talked about envisioning a future where nobody counts calories, nobody reads diet books and all that kind of stuff. Um, is that realistic? Is that something because I think we've always we're always going to have some sort of interest in in food because it's like one of these magical um, activities that we do two to three times a day. People always want to talk about food. Most of the programs on the BBC and channel 4 are about food. We're obsessed with food in the UK. I'm sure it's the same in in the states and other countries. Um, is that is that something that you you see happening?
Jack Bobo: So I think it's definitely possible. You know, I think to some extent, there there's an overemphasis on the genetics and the human factors. And I think part of the reason is that, you know, we forget that uh, genetics probably account for a large amount of obesity, just like genetics accounts for our height. But 50 years ago, people in Japan were 10 inches shorter than they are today. Genetics still accounted for 90% of their height, but they had a different diet. So when you, you know, people today, genetics are really important, but people 50 years ago, genetics was important too when they weren't obese. And so like we're focused on something that wasn't the difference between then and now. Uh, it's the environment that is different between then and now. And so the, you know, idea is that we didn't gain 50 pounds in one year. We certainly didn't gain it in six to 12 weeks. And so the idea that that's how we're going to lose weight, I think just doesn't really make any sense. And, you know, 50 years of dieting and diet research suggests that, you know, no diet works for lots of reasons. You you've talked about on your show before. Um, but what could work is redesigning our food environment so that we lost one or two or three pounds a year for the next 30 years. And 30 years from now, we're 50 pounds lighter and we have no idea how we got there. And yet, somehow, these tweaks in our environment delivered that outcome. And, you know, that's what was happening up until the 1960s that, you know, our environment just wasn't delivering obesity, um, in the way that it is now. So, yeah, I do think that, you know, we can begin to reshape our our food environment. You know, if it was just about, you know, oh, sugar is an addictive, you know, is just as addictive as heroin, you know, you know, if you read Michael Moss's, you know, uh, book or something. Well, then people with more money can afford to buy more food, so shouldn't they be more obese? And yet, of course, the wealthier you are, the healthier you tend to be. So that correlation doesn't hold at all. And so, you know, understanding uh, what's different, well, their food environment is different for wealthier people. You know, they have access to more healthy food, they have more time in order to enjoy it, you know, there are all sorts of things that aren't about the addictiveness of food in order to answer or explain that. And so we really have to take this community approach and that's where things like blue zones and Wellville by Esther Dyson and others, I think are beginning to help us realise just how important community and family and other things are to delivering healthy healthy outcomes.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Jack, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time today and uh, I wish you well with all the future projects and I'll be looking out for the uh, Google Food Lab stuff as well. And uh, do you do you guys uh, create recipes out of that?
Jack Bobo: Um, the Culinary Institute has their, I think it's uh, called Plant Forward or something like that, uh, a website where they are, you know, pushing out some of their lessons, yeah.
Dr Rupy: Epic. I will uh, I'll definitely look into that. I'm actually um, uh, well, I've created my uh, food app at the moment, um, which is uh, geared towards helping people eat well without really thinking about the whole process of ingredient searching and and recipes. So we're going to be launching with around 250, 300 recipes that you can get on your app and it has step-by-step images plus the ability to one-shop click um, your ingredients. So you don't even need to step foot into a supermarket and be bombarded with all these choices. You can just choose your recipes for the week and it just gets sent to you or you can go to the market with the shopping list. Um, so I'll I'll definitely send that to your your way and and get your uh, your opinions on that in the future.
Jack Bobo: No, that sounds great. 2019, my New Year's resolution was to learn to cook Indian food and so, you know, then I I spent the next two weeks, you know, going and buying, you know, a two dozen different ingredients, none of which I had in my house. Um, so now I have a really good stock. So hopefully there's some good recipes there that can make use of these bulk items that I still have.
Dr Rupy: Oh, yeah, tons, tons, loads of that. Uh, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, cumin, they're they're uh, definitely things that I use in a lot of my recipes. So you'll be uh, you'll be spoilt for choice.
Jack Bobo: Sounds great.
Dr Rupy: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Like I said at the start, you can get all of this information and more at thedoctorskitchen.com and I will see you here next time.
