Do we actually make greater than 200 meals selections per day? Such simplistic statements can undermine individuals’s emotions of self-efficacy. Credit score: MPI for Human Growth
Researchers on the Max Planck Institute for Human Growth have critically examined the idea for a incessantly cited determine: that folks make greater than 200 unconscious selections about meals day by day. This determine has circulated in scientific publications, the media, and well being promotion campaigns for almost 20 years with out ever being empirically validated. An article revealed within the journal Urge for food reveals why a extra nuanced view of consuming habits is required.
Numbers play a central position in well being communication, offering steering and motivation. Nonetheless, the benchmarks used are usually not at all times scientifically sound or significant. In well being analysis, the declare that folks make greater than 200 selections about meals day by day with out even noticing has been round for years.
“This number paints a distorted picture of how people make decisions about their food intake and how much control they have over it,” says Maria Almudena Claassen, postdoctoral fellow on the Heart for Adaptive Rationality on the Max Planck Institute for Human Growth.
Along with Director Ralph Hertwig and Jutta Mata, an affiliate analysis scientist on the Max Planck Institute for Human Growth and Professor for Well being Psychology on the College of Mannheim, Claassen has revealed an article that reveals how flawed measurements can result in deceptive concepts about consuming habits.
The place the determine of 200 meals selections per day comes from
The determine of 200 meals selections examined within the article comes from a 2007 examine by U.S. scientists Brian Wansink and Jeffery Sobal. They requested 154 individuals to first estimate what number of selections they made per day about consuming and ingesting—a mean of 14.4.
Subsequent, individuals estimated the variety of “when,” “what,” “how much,” “where,” and “with whom” selections they made for a typical meal. These estimations have been multiplied by the variety of meals, snacks, and drinks they reported consuming in a typical day and summed, giving a mean of 226.7 selections made per day. The authors interpreted the distinction of 212.3 between the 2 estimates as an indicator of unconscious or “mindless” selections.
Why this quantity is problematic
Claassen and her colleagues on the Max Planck Institute for Human Growth problem this conclusion. They determine methodological and conceptual shortcomings inherent within the examine’s design and argue that the discrepancy within the estimated variety of selections might be defined by a well known cognitive impact known as the subadditivity impact. This impact describes individuals’s tendency to offer increased frequency estimates when requested to evaluate a number of particular points of a basic query individually.
The researchers conclude that the excessive variety of “mindless” meals selections shouldn’t be an empirically noticed actuality however reasonably the results of the subadditivity impact.
The analysis workforce additionally warns of the implications that such simplistic statements can have on our understanding of consuming habits. “Such a perception can undermine feelings of self-efficacy,” says Claassen. “Simplified messages like this distract from the fact that people are perfectly capable of making conscious and informed food decisions.”
Why a methodological pluralism in researching meals selections is required
So how can selections about meals be meaningfully outlined and empirically investigated? The researchers suggest defining food-related selections in concrete, context-specific phrases. What’s being eaten? How a lot? What’s being averted? When? In what social or emotional context?
These selections can solely be understood inside the context during which they’re made. They’re based mostly on particular, concrete conditions—comparable to selecting between salad and pasta, or deciding whether or not to skip a serving.
What issues most is specializing in the important thing selections that align with one’s private objectives: for somebody aiming to shed weight, it is likely to be choosing a light-weight salad over pasta at dinner; for somebody striving to eat extra sustainably, it might imply selecting a vegetarian meal as an alternative of a meat-based one.
To empirically map this attitude, the researchers advocate methodological pluralism, combining qualitative observations, digital monitoring instruments, diary research, and cross-cultural analysis to realize a differentiated and real looking image of individuals’s on a regular basis meals selections.
“Magic numbers such as the alleged 200 food decisions do not tell us much about the psychology of eating decisions, even more so if these numbers turn out to be themselves distorted,” says Ralph Hertwig, Director on the Max Planck Institute for Human Growth. “To get a better understanding of eating behavior, we need to get a better grasp of exactly how decisions are made and what influences them.”
Self-nudging can strengthen knowledgeable, health-promoting selections
Armed with this data and understanding of their meals selections, persons are in a greater place to undertake wholesome consuming habits of their on a regular basis lives. One helpful technique for on a regular basis use is self-nudging. It entails designing one’s surroundings in order that more healthy selections are simpler to make. For instance, putting pre-cut items of fruit inside simple attain within the fridge or preserving sweets out of sight may also help individuals stick with their objectives with out continuously having to depend on aware management.
Self-nudging is a part of the boosting method, which, in contrast to nudging, strengthens particular person decision-making competencies reasonably than counting on exterior environment-driven cues.
Extra data:
Maria Almudena Claassen et al, The (mis-)measurement of meals selections, Urge for food (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2025.107928
Supplied by
Max Planck Society
Quotation:
The parable of 200 day by day meals selections: Research challenges widely-cited declare (2025, July 7)
retrieved 7 July 2025
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