Stress, your brain, and food

Trying to decipher which food is safe or healthy can be stressful when you are faced with thousands of marketing messages every time you enter the store.

Tyler Davis has a very approachable way of explaining how our brains make decisions and how marketing messages use that information to get you to buy their product! This was one of my favorite interviews so far!

Take a listen:

Our brain has a lot of processes that help us to make decisions and evaluate pieces of evidence for those decisions. Part of our brain is very attuned to just accumulating evidence for the value of something. It integrates all of the different pieces of evidence that we might experience about a particular choice and put it together in terms of overall value, how much we might like it, or want to approach that thing.

“Food marketers are well aware of the kind of differences amongst these technologies in terms of which ones we like and which ones we don’t like.” Dr. Tyler Davis, a neuroscience researcher at Texas Tech, helps us understand of the high-risk food technologies that he has researched and shares tips on how we can overcome food bullying by understanding more about the brain.

Key Points:

• Ways food marketers leverage our brain to make emotional purchases
• High-risk technologies and the differences between them
• How to overcome food bullying

The Conversation:

(03:59): Recap of the first season episode with Tyler Davis

(06:39): What does our brain do with conflicting information?

(07:53): High-risk technologies and the differences between them

(09:20): Is animal welfare is a lower risk technology?

(13:30): How our brains are being manipulated through food marketing

(18:59): How food bullying has led to stigma

Fabulous Quotes:

• “Food marketers are well aware of the kind of differences amongst these technologies in terms of which ones we like and which ones we don’t like.”
• “We assign social value to some of these constructs like GMO, hormones, and antibiotics.”
• “We need to replace information or relearn something new is absolutely right, according to what we know about the neuroscience of learning.”

Links to Check Out: 

• Tyler’s twitter
• Tyler’s email: tyler.h.davis@ttu.edu
• Food Bullying: How to Avoid Buying B.S. by Michele Payn

Image by Peggy CCI from Pixabay