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Tip 1 - Foolproof Your Fridge For Healthy Eating

16 January 2009

Its 3pm, you're ravenously hungry, tired, craving chocolate and faced with both a chocolate bar and an apple in the fridge... which one would you eat? Well I don't know about anyone else but I'm pretty sure I'd grab the chocolate bar and scarper with it. Unless there were enough witnesses there to guilt me into taking the healthy option.

Willpower Can't Win Every Time

Chances are most people would take the chocolate in those circumstances and that's not because we're all weak and don't have enough willpower. It's very difficult to always be 'good' when it comes to eating. Sometimes we're just tired and hungry and we simply don't have the energy or inclination to turn down the unhealthy option.

Libertarian Paternalism - Encouraging Healthy Living

That's where libertarian paternalism comes in: yes, we're free to choose to eat whatever we want - good, bad, or indifferent. But, if we care enough about our health to want to make healthy eating a priority, then we can choose to modify our environment to make healthy eating the easiest option. That way it's much more likely that we'll take the healthy option.

Paternalism - See No Evil Eat No Evil

Try this new scenario: it's 3pm, you're ravenously hungry, tired, craving chocolate and faced with a fridge full of fresh fruit... you know the closest chocolate bar is a 5 minute drive down the road. Do you get in your car and drive to the shop to get a chocolate bar? Or do you eat a piece of fresh fruit from the fridge?

Nine times out of ten I'm going to eat the fresh fruit that's in my fridge. Sometimes I might want that chocolate bar so bad that I'll get in my car and drive down the road. But, frankly that's pretty unlikely. Because by the time I've picked up the car keys and put my shoes on, I'll probably be having second thoughts and thinking to myself "this is stupid, just eat an apple".

Liberty - I Can Have Chocolate If I Want

Don't get me wrong - I'm still free to have the chocolate if I want! There is no rule saying I can't have the chocolate. I've simply modified my environment so that I must expend more energy and effort to get the chocolate than to access fresh fruit.

And besides, without a chocolate bar staring me in the face every time I open the fridge, I'm not likely to feel as tempted. Having temptations within our vision is a big problem in dietary terms say researchers. They've shown time and time again that if we can see tempting food we're more likely to eat it.

A Nutritionist's Perspective

A quick check of my fridge reveals an alarming quantity of chocolate on our middle shelves. This is where we store our one packet of chocolate biscuits that are enjoyed in the evenings as a treat. It's also where my husband has chosen to store a very large box of chocolate toffees he got for Christmas. Which is all fair enough - but why the middle shelf? They're like a flashing neon sign when I open the fridge door, I've realised the bright packaging of the chocolate and biscuits is the first thing that catches my eye when I open the fridge. It's time for a fridge overhaul... read on.

Practical Advice - Rearranging The Food In Our Fridge

Practically speaking you might not want to remove all treat foods from your house and that's fine. But, our brains aren't stupid, every time you open that fridge and see the brightly coloured packaging on the chocolate wrappers, cookie packet and so-forth you have stored in there, it's like a neon-light styled advertisement. Cut the commercial advertising inside your fridge! Make your fridge an advertisement free zone.

Move treat foods in your fridge to an out of sight location - store them in non-transparent containers on the bottom shelf at the back of the fridge OR on the top shelf of your pantry OR better still, store them in the back of your basement or garage fridge if you have one.
The middle shelf of your fridge is high-rent property - this is the first place we look when we open the fridge door. If food manufacturers were going to pay rent for space in our fridge, they'd be paying top dollar for those middle shelves! If you're keen to take libertarian paternalism to heart, then you should only rent your middle shelves out to healthy food - fruit, veges, yoghurt, milk and other nutrient packed goodies. Place these more wholesome foods on the middle shelves in an easily accessible space. There should be plenty of room there now that you've moved all those treat foods to the garage, right?

You might be reading this and thinking 'sure, sure, I think I can beat the treat temptation without having to rearrange my fridge'. But trust me on this one, studies clearly show us humans are quite predictable when it comes to food - if we see food, we eat it! Take 15 minutes while dinner is cooking tonight and start rearranging your fridge contents. Wrap up treats in aluminium foil if you don't have enough containers, just so they can't be seen. But do something to rid yourself of those visual cues.

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