While on the subject of excessive eating and the psychological causes of such behavior, an interesting finding of food psychologists is that excessive eating is driven by similar factors that make you buy more things than you actually need when you go shopping. For example, the ‘BUY ONE, GET ONE’ offers that are being offered by clever marketers on many consumer products in the markets today, have a great impact on their sales.

The other day, my friend returned back home from the supermarket with two large-sized bottles of tomato ketchup, even though her normal consumption is only bottle per month, because one of the bottles was offered for free on the purchase of another bottle. Packets of biscuits, potato wafers, chocolates, etc. find their way into our homes and consequently our stomachs through these attractive marketing strategies.

Researchers like Professor Brian Wansink have found out the probable reason of why we buy too many or too much of anything. According to them there are a couple of reasons as to why we engage in excessive shopping, which in case of food products might be the most probable reason for excessive eating. They are:

• We shop excessively because we do not strictly plan out on what we are going to buy before going to the shop. How many times don’t you go to the bakers and purchase a pack of your favorite chocolate biscuits along with a fruit cake, even though you had originally intended to buy only the latter? This might happen because of the tempting presentation of the biscuits or because of some interesting offers given on them like ‘Buy 3 packs for $3’ etc. Similarly some companies offer great discounts on their products when you buy large quantities of the item. An offer like ‘ $10 rebate on purchase of five packets of Chocolate Biscuits’ is enough to make most people buy the product even if they really don’t need it.

• Another marketing tactic that might eventually promote excessive eating in you is the clever usage of numbers in advertisements. Which do you think is going to sell more- a shirt that is priced at $49 or a shirt that is priced at $50? Similarly, which caption is more effective – ‘Buy 2 chocolate muffins for your evening tea’ or ‘Buy some chocolate muffins for your evening tea’? An advertisement that says ‘One coke for $1’ or ‘3 cokes for $3’ is going to sell more? It has been observed that human psychological make up is very suggestible to numbers when it comes to purchasing things and we set our purchase limits according to the numbers suggested in the advertising content.

The effect of size and shape of food containers on excessive eating is discussed in the next session.

image credit: farm1.static.flickr.com