The problem of hyper-stimuli

The problem of hyper-stimuli is the term I have chosen for all the issues caused by the fact that technology has produced more exciting versions of something we are biologically driven to seek out. Our food is enhanced by processing to be calorie dense. Our screens can simulate and satiate the drive for competition (video games) and sex (porn) far better than the real world.

These hyper-stimuli can trick us to seek out the simulation not the genuine article.

We are not the only species struggling with the problem of artificially created hyper-stimuli. Beetles in central Australia started to die out after preferring to mate with stubbie tops over females of their species as the bottle tops were shinier than the shiny female beetles.

But humans have been very inventive, so it is not simply by accident that hyper-stimuli have entered the environment, we have actively put them there.

Some of the effects of this has been the focus of governments such as the obesity crisis while others governments seem determined to ignore such as the lost boys crisis written about by Nicholas Eberstadt.

The Obesity Crisis

The Obesity crisis is the one symptom of the entrance of hyper-stimuli that Governments around the world actually care about – but conveniently are forgetting their part in its creation.

The hyper-processed food, which is the defining factor of the problem, started with a plan hatched by government to prevent future food shortages by enlisting major food companies to create food that has three main characteristics which are now the hallmarks of the hyper-processed food we consume.

Palatable, portable, and plentiful

Palatability is caused by the abundance of foods that would have been very rewarding to our ancestors. There is the particular golden goose of food that can be both sweet and fatty. In the wild there are no foods that are sweet and fatty – but lots of foods that are sweet or fatty – and we are programmed to hunt them out (sometimes literally) as they are particularly energy dense, and exactly the food we needed to fuel our big brains.

Portability is driven by to two factors, the first being the ability to preserve food for long periods of time (or to make them shelf-stable) and that a small amount contains a lot of calories. I think of the paleo bars in my locker at work, despite all pretense of being healthy they are small, shelf-stable nuggets of food that have been processed to be that way. This is achieved through processing that removes many of the nutrients whilst preserving the energy density. Even rudimentary processing techniques like drying food has this effect. By not including nutrients like fiber in sweet foods – which is something typically found together in nature like fruit - or protein from fatty foods which again is typically found as a package deal – like nuts, we have all the cues of foods we are programmed to seek out but none of the nutrients that are crucial. Particularly when you considered that these are the very parts of food that help us to feel full.

Plentifulness is simply that there is an abundance. This is perhaps the Achilles heel for many people, we couldn't gorge ourselves and over-eat if the food was merely very delicious (and energy dense) and able to be stored. It is the fact that there is an abundance of foods and no signal to stop eating them a lot of the time (see the previous paragraph) that drives the obesity crisis.

Solving the problem, they created

The problem of food as a hyper-stimuli has reached the halls of power (after all it creates major issues for any public health system) and with that the government policy makers have turned their minds to possible solutions. The ones they have come up with are predictably bureaucratic things like a sugar tax. But increasing the price based on one specific aspect of processed food is not likely to have much of an effect as – at least for most of us – it doesn't go to the reason why we go for processed food over food cooked from scratch (that is already a more cost effective way of eating than the former). In other words, a tax doesn't go to the three things that make processed food appealing: that it is palatable, portable, and plentiful.

The issue is the individualists rebuke to various proposed top down policies to encourage healthy eating – though right in its criticism that it will be ineffective – the possibility for individual solutions – i.e. will power to just stop eating hyper-processed food – is going to be very difficult for most people. Our entire western lifestyle is predicated on the existence of these foods. We work at least 9 hours a day which means that we either must bring or buy the food we need for the time we are at work (or school in the case of kids). Whether we pack or purchase the food we consume makes little difference. The food we pack is probably shelf-stable stuff that can easily survive in a lunchbox (unless you cook in bulk and freeze food to bring like I do – but even I don't manage that 5 days a week) and the food we buy we have no control over and is probably packed with stuff to make it tastier (or hyper-palatable).

For most of us in the western world we are money rich and time poor. An increase in the price of store-bought food (such as the result of a sugar tax) would deter few of us from the convenience of buying not cooking what we eat.

If we are going to solve the obesity crisis one of two things needs to happen. The first is that the availability of hyper-processed foods needs to cease. This is basically impossible when all the economic incentives are in favour of them continuing and essentially mean waving a wand and doing away with most of the foods that currently stock supermarket shelves. The second is that our lifestyles need to change so that food that is hyper-processed doesn't have the same key function in our lives, and for that we need a completely different food culture.

A Food Subculture

Many of the countries that have survived the onslaught of hyper-processed food better than most are the ones which already had a culture where quality of food is the defining factor as well as communal consumption. It is very hard to change the entire culture of a country, but it is much easier to create "cliques" or "subcultures" that differ from the main one.

People that want to buffer themselves from the dominant food culture that creates the conditions for the obesity crisis should find friends that want to cook together, eat together, and share food they have prepared in advance. In a previous house I lived in we used to share cooking and do a "meal swap" where we would take it in turns to pack work lunches for each other (which was a great way to prevent the boredom that comes with always eating your own cooking – which happens even to the best cooks among us).

A key part of a good food culture is re-socialising eating so that it doesn't happen in front of a screen or in the privacy of our own home. When we eat socially, we eat slower, which gives the "I feel full" feeling time to kick in, it also creates a possibility of feedback from people where we need it to curb unhealthy eating habits. We are far less likely to engage in food habits we know are bad for us if all our food is eaten in front of others who are likely to engage in a healthy amount of "food-shaming".

Communal or bulk cooking and eating are also easier in a busy life. It takes almost the same amount of time to cook for 2 people as it does for 16 people. Particularly if you have help with the prep tasks like chopping everything. Leftovers from dinner can then be taken as lunch the next day.

A communal cooking and eating group would be something easy to create within a local area where each night dinner is cooked and eaten at a different persons house or even if the cooking happened one day a week and the leftovers taken for eating the rest of the week.

It is probably the easiest form of community to create, everyone loves food, and aside from a general need to agree rules about what ingredients can be cooked with, no shared values are particularly necessary.

Communities Based on Avoiding Hyper-Stimuli

As with creating a food subculture, it would be relatively easy to create other subcultures around avoiding other forms of hyper-stimuli (such as social media, porn and video games) as there is no need to agree on why those things are being avoided, just that they are best when the exposure is in low dose, if at all.

But, telling people not to do something is a tactic that reaps very few results, but giving people a "why" - and an understanding what the basic drives for food, social acceptance, sex and competition are there for and how best to direct them fruitfully- gives people a mission.

It is communities based on shared values that have the most power to resist negative aspects of the dominant culture because they have a positive vision for the future – which is exactly what is needed to tackle what is perhaps the most series problem facing the developed world.