STUDY ANALYSIS: People eat more big pretzels, faster
Scoff all you want, but this actually has important implications with regard to processed food and therefore obesity
New research from Penn State shows that the size of pretzels affects consumption by governing how quickly a person will eat them and how big their bites are. You can be forgiven for thinking this is a trivial finding. In fact, it’s not, because it has clear implications for our understanding of processed-food consumption, which is driving obesity.
It’s pretty well established now that we eat processed food in a different way from other kinds of food. A 2019 study showed, for example, that we eat processed foods 30 percent faster—that’s a lot—and, as a result, our bodies’ natural hormonal mechanisms to signal satiety don’t have time to respond. That means we overeat.
And if most of what we eat is processed food, that means we overeat all the time.
Of course, the legion of food scientists who are paid buckets of dough to make processed foods, including snacks like pretzels, as moreish as possible know this all too well. They know that the physical properties of processed food—its sweetness, its levels of salt, its crunchiness, its chewiness—determine how satisfying it is to eat, and that by getting the balance right, they can ensure consumers reach the desired “bliss point” and just can’t stop eating. Which means greater profits for the companies that make the processed food.
And more obesity.
I’ve called processed food “weaponised food” with good reason. “Hyperpalatability,” the euphemistic name given to the properties of “perfect” processed food, is a weaponisation of our sensory neurobiology against us.
There can be no doubt that the dramatic dietary shift from locally produced whole foods to processed factory-made food over the past century has been a disaster for our health in the developed world. Virtually every kind of physical and mental ailment has been linked to consumption of processed food, from obesity and diabetes to cancer and even autism. What’s worse is that we seem to have given up on addressing the underlying causes of our growing ill health, and instead are resorting to ad hoc treatments such as the so-called wonder jab Wegovy/Ozempic. We get fatter and sicker, and the food manufacturers and big-pharma fat cats get richer.
It’s not just that this food is unusually calorie-dense, and mixes carbohydrates and fats in ways that aren’t really seen in the natural world, or that processed food contains additives and ingredients that humans have no history of consuming: it’s that the physical properties of processed food make it easy and satisfying to eat in a way that perhaps no other food, certainly no natural food, has ever been—or could ever be, for that matter.
Processed food is a unique problem in the history of food.
So it’s becoming clearer to scientists that they have to take seriously all of the physical properties of this novel form of food if they want to do something about obesity.
Most food scientists seem to believe that the best approach is to modify processed food itself, to bypass conscious mechanisms of control, because these conscious mechanisms don’t really work anyway.
This was something that came across very strongly when I read Dr Chris Van Tulleken’s widely feted recent book Ultra-Processed People. He absolutely refused to address the issue of processed food as one of personal responsibility. Not once did he say that people should just stop eating processed food. I think Van Tulleken actually believes people can’t once they’ve started. Which may be true, in some cases.
Certainly, studies like this new pretzel study make it clear that there really are mechanisms at work beyond conscious control when we eat processed food. The question of whether that means we have no control over how we eat, remains to be seen however. It’s not a simple issue.
Anyway.
Seventy-five adults took part in the new study. They ate three different servings of pretzels in a “sensory evaluation centre”, where they were filmed as they ate. The different servings were all the same amount of food, but the pretzels themselves were different sizes: small, medium and large.
Researchers watched the participants eating and noted how many minutes they spent eating and how many bites they took, as well as recording the total volume and calories eaten in each serving.
A press release explains:
When participants were given the same amount of food, how much they ate—in both snack weight and calories—depended on unit size, with study participants consuming 31% and 22% more of the large pretzels compared to the small and medium sized pretzels, respectively. Size of the pretzel also influenced eating rate and bite size, with the largest pretzel size yielding the fastest eating rate and largest mean bite size.
The researchers also reported that, after accounting for eating behavior, the pretzel size alone did not significantly affect how much a person ate, suggesting the eating behavior the different pretzel sizes prompted was driving total intake. Their results suggest larger pretzel size induces a person to eat more quickly and take bigger bites.
So, according to the study authors, if we want to get people to eat less processed food, it should be designed in ways that encourage you to eat less; for example, pretzels should be smaller.
Good idea.
But wait a second. Why would processed-food manufacturers do this? After all, if you eat less of their product, they make less money. The shareholders won’t like that. So what incentive is there here?
Maybe a “responsible” alternative brand could break into the market with a smaller pretzel aimed at people who want to eat less. Maybe.
Ultimately, I don’t think that efforts to alter the physical properties of processed food will be successful, despite the scientists’ best wishes. People don’t want pretzels that aren’t so crunchy or salty, or chocolate puddings that aren’t so sweet or gooey. The hyperpalatability is the point.
So now what?
I agree with this essay. In the experience of my wife and myself, we have found real food to be vastly more satisfying, healthier, and easier on the digestion. Case in point: BACON. We started smoking our own after I learned how astonishingly easy is is to cure and smoke bacon. Our bacon consumption went down per meal, but up overall. By this, I mean what used to be a portion of bacon might be five or six thin strips. With properly made bacon, two thick strips was more than enough. Two eggs, two strips of bacon, two pieces of toast, and a glass of juice makes a heavy meal with proper bacon, actual farm fresh eggs, and home baked break. All of it real food and all of it vastly more satisfying. Real bacon is amazingly good; the stuff you buy at the grocery store is just bacon-shaped shit. Another case in point: fudge striped cookies. I loved 'em as a kid; now I can eat a whole pack and not be satisfied. If, however, I eat two small Walker's chocolate covered shortbread cookies, I need no more. Real food in both cases makes all the difference. The more my wife and I move to real food, the healthier and happier we are. We eat very well now, better than most do in restaurants, and without all the MSG.
"Now what" indeed. It seems the more I actually learn about something that everyone already knows is unhealthy, the more I wonder what the point is to learn it if the mass will not take any personal steps to stopping their consumption of it.
But I don't want to black pill. It's just frustrating. All you can do is try to push people you know personally in the right direction and try to do right by your own family and not eat this, in some cases literal, garbage.