Friday, February 25, 2011

Things They Should Invent: unhealthy foods must always be available in single servings

Building on my last food incentives post, I'm defining "unhealthy food" to mean food where the percentage daily value of saturated or trans fat, sodium, or cholesterol (and any other bad nutrients I'm forgetting) exceeds the percentage daily value of calories. For example, a food where a standard serving contains 10% of your daily calories but 20% of your daily sodium is considered unhealthy.

For foods that meet these criteria, we introduce two rules:

1. These foods must be available for purchase in single servings wherever they are sold, a single serving being whatever size is used to calculate the per-serving value in the nutrition information box. They can be available in larger quantities as well, but single servings must always be manufactured and sold. Retailers would not be allowed to sell a six-serving package without selling single-serving packages.

2. These foods cannot be subject to bulk discounts or lower unit prices for larger packages. The six-serving package must cost at least six times as much as six single-serving packages.

This will reduce the likelihood of having unhealthy food sitting around the house because of a single craving.

For example, I absolutely adore President's Choice 7 Cheese Lasagna. No other lasagna, including homemade efforts to duplicate it by people with excellent cooking skills, has been able to satisfy that particular craving. However, it's very high in fat and sodium, so I only allow myself to have it a couple of times a year. The problem is that the smallest package it comes in is six standard servings, and my tastebuds very much want to eat the whole thing in one sitting even though I know my body will regret it. I put half of it straight in the freezer as soon as it's made, but I still end up eating it within the next few days because I can see it every time I open the freezer. So because I bought something to fulfill a single craving, I end up eating six unhealthy meals within a week.

I'd imagine this sort of thing happens rather a lot to many people. You get something and eat a reasonable amount, but then you have leftovers, and you have to eat the leftovers before they go bad. If we could buy a single serving to satisfy a craving, then we'd only have one reasonably-sized unhealthy meal instead of a giant unhealthy meal or a week's worth of regular unhealthy meals.

At first glance this sounds like it would produce far more packaging to be thrown out, but that might not be true because many people would be buying just a single serving instead of a larger package. For example, the large lasagna has a cardboard box, a tray, and plastic wrap. The single-serving lasagna would have a smaller cardboard box, a smaller tray, and less plastic wrap. Because I'm buying by the craving, I'd be buying just one single-serving lasagna to replace the six-serving lasagna. I'm not buying six single-serving lasagnas.

An argument often heard against health-based food controls is that it takes away consumer choice. This one doesn't; this one increases consumer choice. Currently, we don't have the option of buying certain foods in small amounts. This would give us the option, and would in no way prevent people from buying more than one serving.

4 comments:

Lorraine said...

Well, one thing they have invented is those "100 calorie" packs of junk food. One finding has been that the ingredient lists sometimes differ substantially from the 'originals.' Surprise, surprise.

impudent strumpet said...

How do the ingredients differ?

Anonymous said...

I think that's a brilliant idea! I wouldn't even vote to sell "multipacks" of anything unhealthy. There's been SO times I've looked at some of my 'favorite junk' and wished I could get just a LITTLE bit of it instead of having to bring home the industrial size version and then being tempted to eat all of it.
Impudent Strumpet, whoever you are, I think I love you!

laura k said...

It's a great idea for the craving buy. In recent years, when giving into a craving, we've tried to buy the individual packages instead of the "family sized" packages of chips, cheese doodles, etc. Unfortunately sometimes we end up buying a whole bunch of those little bags! (But we only a couple of times a year.)