Why we eat so much at Christmas, and why we never learn. Part Two

How would you feel if your local supermarket offered you the option of a 20 per cent increase in the price of all your food purchases?

I know that I promised in the last post, that I would start to explain the “why” bit, but I thought that it might be appropriate for me to highlight a little bit more of the “what”, but bring in a bit of “why”. Does that make sense? No? Okay… read on… and if it is still confusing, just call me, and I’ll explain…

One of the big mistakes that humans make consistently, is a tendency not to be very good at predicting the future. Or maybe, it would be better put as an over-inflated sense of our accuracy in predicting the future.

So when it comes to planning our food consumption, we tend not to. What I mean, is that most of our food shopping (in the wealthy developed world) is done on an incidental basis. We shop often, because (most of us) have easy access to food, and middle-class (I hate these types of labels) people, with a reasonable income, can afford to buy a whole range of foods that they don’t really need (but want). Marketing is very good at making wants – and turning these wants into needs (more about this later).

At Christmas, it is estimated that you will throw around 20 percent of the food you purchase. So, from an economic perspective, what you are doing is paying 20 per cent more than you should have. In other words, if you bought less, you would actually make a saving.

To put that into a different frame, think about whether you would feel okay if your local supermarket said that you would have to pay 20 per cent more for your food. You would be a little bit annoyed, wouldn’t you?

Now I fully understand that it is your prerogative, in an individualist society, to buy as much as you bloody well like, and you don’t need paternalistic academics, in their cosy little houses, in cosy little Melbourne, telling you how to live your life, but think about it. You are not only wasting food (thus putting undue pressure on the environment), you are also losing money.

The best way to avoid this, is to plan. But we rarely do.

So, in the next post, I’ll explain some of the psychological and sociological reasons about why we fail to plan.

[Via http://tribalinsight.wordpress.com]