Motivation and Eating in America

In today’s American society, food and eating is a very important and very large part of American culture. Food is everywhere, and it’s arguable that in American society, the desire to eat has transcended extrinsic values into intrinsic ones. Billboards, commercials, newspapers, websites, and more all advertise restaurants or food brands. With so many influences being shoved down the average American’s throat, it’s not hard to see why American culture is so largely based around eating more.

American society was not always like this. As our country has grown and shaped itself into what it is today, food shifted away from being not just an object of necessity, but more so an object of desire. The rise of consumerism and national advertising has put a spotlight on food, and all of the business that produce them. Food corporations heavily promote their product, and that has clearly made a strong impact on how much food Americans consume, and also the types of unhealthy, but “desirable” foods Americans consume. The following graph displays the drastic increase in sugar consumption over the past 200 years.  

These businesses promote their products as something a happy and healthy individual eats. Unhealthy food and excess food are both displayed as objects of desire even though these foods may not be desirable at all. These influences affect Americans’ motivations towards how and what they consume. Although people don’t biologically need excess or unhealthy food, the external incentives that corporations throw at people change their motivations. The need of having to eat food to live combines with the many different types of incentives that come with eating food. These incentives can be anything, and corporations do not hesitate to showcase these incentives at all. Sometimes, corporations will even be willing to advertise their product through sex appeal, as showcased in the following advertisement.

American culture revolves around an idea that “less is more.” What this means for the average American is that effectively, less money for more food is an attractive prospect. When someone goes to the supermarket and looks at, for example, two different bags of potato chips. One bag is much larger than the other bag, but yet it does not cost that much more than the first bag. The consumer is inclined to buy the larger bag, because they are therefore getting more potato chips for their hard earned money. This phenomenon works in conjunction with something called the unit bias. The unit bias is the idea that a person is going to finish eating their sandwich, their bag of potato chips, or their milkshake just because they are one singular unit. So, when a person buys a larger bag of potato chips, not only will they be motivated to eat the whole thing because it is an entire unit, but other external factors may be motivating them to finish it as well, depending on the advertisements they have been exposed to.

In America, eating is strongly intertwined with motivation. Americans eat more and unhealthier based on the external factors they are faced with in today’s society through things like advertising and even the idea promoted in pop culture that eating is a good way to cope with emotion. If people work towards educating Americans of the link between motivations and eating, America may be able to fix the problems it has with people eating more and unhealthier.