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brazil84 comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong
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From what I remember, I did occasionally beg for pizza around that age, but if I'm modeling my early childhood psychology right that had as much to do with cultural/media influence as native preference. Pizza is the canonical party food in American children's media, and its prominence in e.g. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles probably didn't help.
Media counts for a lot! Show of hands, who here found themselves craving Turkish delight after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe without actually knowing what it was?
Do you agree that part of the reason kids beg for pizza is that it tastes really good?
Let me ask you this: If you gave lab rats a choice between pizza and oatmeal, which do you think they would choose?
I don't know the answer to this, but I'd caution against using lab rats, which, keep in mind, have quite different dietary needs, as an indicator of human dietary preferences.
Well you are capable of estimating some probabilities, no? I agree that caution is in order, but I feel pretty confident, perhaps 90% probability, that lab rats will choose pizza over oatmeal.
Here's a study which might affect your probability assessments:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0060407
I'd take the other side of the bet. Anybody willing to test this?
I think pizza, at least in the United States and during the years around my own childhood, occupied a cultural position that's not fully describable in terms of its nutritional content. Stimulus concerns are sufficient to explain favoring it over something like (plain) oatmeal, but not over something like spaghetti and meatballs or chicken-fried steak.
I'm told curry occupies a similar position in Japan. Other cultures probably have their own equivalents.
Ok, I guess I read your first post too quickly. You don't seem to dispute my basic claim that pizza tastes really good. You also don't seem to dispute my claim that children's preference for pizza is evidence of this. Because whatever food children beg for -- whether it's pizza, hot dogs, or curry -- is probably going to be something that tastes good.
I do agree that children ask for pizza -- as opposed to other tasty foods -- for cultural reasons. But I don't think that contradicts any argument I have made.
My kids didn't want pizza (pretty much ever), until they started school, and then they wanted pizza primarily when having friends over. I think its more social/cultural then anything else.
Also, they are pizza snobs- I'm not allowed to order from a local place because its "too salty, and too greasy." They'd prefer no pizza, or a usual dinner (stir fry or something) to the wrong pizza.
Also, I'm not sure if "super stimulus" food are super stimulus consistently. I hate fast food burgers, and have since I was little (but sit me down in a hole-in-the-wall mexican place and I'll eat until I wish I was dead).
Just adding a few anecdotes.
Well do you agree that despite your experiences, there do seem to be certain foods which are considered tasty and difficult to resist by large numbers of people?
I actually live in a fairly healthy "bubble," I don't know many significantly overweight people. I know the stereotypes, I guess, that fat people guzzle sodas and pound mcdonalds.
I guess the one example of someone who eats typical bad-for-you foods is my wife's sister who basically grew up only eating burgers (an extremely picky eater with very permissive parents. She still pretty much only eats burgers). But she weighs 125 lbs and runs marathons.
But again, these are my selective anecdotes. I don't claim representative knowledge.
And the overweight people you know don't seem to have any specific foods or types of foods which they have trouble resisting?