Mere moments before the Cafe with the Food and Branding Lab, we were all sitting in Rose House Dinner. Many of us knew that we would be going to the Cafe focused on food after dinner. We did not know that our actions at dinner would be the subject for the Cafe that followed.
At the Cafe, I learned why I eat what I eat. It apparently has very little to do with how hungry I am. Instead, I eat based on what is put in front of me. It seems kind of obvious, but it had not occurred to me before.
The three men at the Cafe told us all about the food branding trends they had researched. Many of those trends have manifested in my own life within the last day. These researchers predicted the composition of my plate without having seen it. All in all, I was left feeling that psychology is kind of amazing.
The most accurate study I heard at the Cafe involved the trends of Cornell students purchases over the course of the semester. Apparently, as the semester progresses, we buy more and more junk food. The peaks of junk food purchases happen right before Fall Break and during finals. This happens to correlate with when most students experience the highest levels of stress. Its good to know that I’m not the only one who is stress eating.
Overall, the Cafe was very interesting. I learned that my own behavior falls into some common trends. I also learned that there are ways to influence these trends, for good or evil.
Kay, it seems like you’ve really learned about food and brand from this experience! One of my friends actually works for the lab and she tells me fun stories about background on experiments she does sometimes. I love psychology and I think that understanding why we eat what we do is really interesting and can be so helpful in the treatment of specific psychological disorders. We have much to learn about the complex mechanisms of the brain, but for now, it’s awesome that we can at least map our behaviors to environmental stimuli!
I find the psychology behind food and eating to be extremely interesting. Hearing about your experience makes me curious just how much thought goes into the experiments and analysis that the food and brand lab performs. I find it interesting that the way food is presented in front of us actually has a really big influence on how much we eat.
It seems like it was an interesting talk. I never really thought about how buying junk food correlated with stress.
This definitely makes sense of why my diet seems to consist of junk food at the end of the semester. Also, have you ever felt like you felt hungry just because someone else by you was eating?
I think it is very interesting the students purchase more junk food after fall break. I have found that I too have been snacking more even when I am not hungry and I have to remember to eat some fruit or vegetables during the day. Unfortunately for the past couple of days they are not the first things that I reach for when making my plate. Stress eating has really increased among everyone in the past few days.