Junk food is everywhere. We’re eating way too much of it. Most of us know what we’re doing and yet we do it anyway.

So here’s a suggestion offered by two researchers at the Rand Corporation: Why not take a lesson from alcohol control policies and apply them to where food is sold and how it’s displayed?

“Many policy measures to control obesity (肥胖症) assume that people consciously and rationally choose what and how much they eat and therefore focus on providing information and more access to healthier foods,” note the two researchers.

“In contrast,” the researchers continue, “many regulations that don’t assume people make rational choices have been successfully applied to control alcohol, a substance - like food - of which immoderate (过度的) consumption leads to serious health problems.”

The research references studies of people’s behavior with food and alcohol and results of alcohol restrictions, and then lists five regulations that the researchers think might be promising if applied to junk foods. Among them:

Density restrictions: licenses to sell alcohol aren’t handed out unplanned to all comers but are allotted (分配) based on the number of places in an area that already sell alcohol. These make alcohol less easy to get and reduce the number of psychological cues to drink.

Similarly, the researchers say, being presented with junk food stimulates our desire to eat it. So why not limit the density of food outlets, particularly ones that sell food rich in empty calories? And why not limit sale of food in places that aren’t primarily food stores?

Display and sales restrictions: California has a rule prohibiting alcohol displays near the cash registers in gas stations, and in most places you can’t buy alcohol at drive-through facilities. At supermarkets, food companies pay to have their wares in places where they’re easily seen. One could remove junk food to the back of the store and ban them from the shelves at checkout lines. The other measures include restricting portion sizes, taxing and prohibiting special price deals for junk foods, and placing warning labels on the products.

Every morning, I eat the same breakfast. Every evening, I eat a different dinner. Strange? But I’m not alone. Why do we avoid variety in the morning, yet later in the same day, seek variety in our choice of food?

Part of the answer is biological. We are most energetic in the morning, and our arousal level (唤醒水平) declines from that top until we go to sleep. So we may prefer less stimulating foods in the morning to avoid feeling overstimulated, and prefer more stimulating foods later to avoid feeling under-stimulated.

Part of the answer is cultural. The modern workday means we have the least time for meals in the morning. If we find a breakfast rewarding and efficient, eating that same food for breakfast will become a habit we stick to.

However, much of the answer still lies in psychology - not that we believe breakfast is not important but that people pursue different goals when eating breakfast and other meals.

What goals are we pursuing in our meals? Two goals influence all kinds of decisions about what we eat — hedonic (享乐的) and practical goals. Hedonic goals drive people to eat foods that provide pleasurable experiences and feelings, and practical goals drive people to eat to efficiently achieve other aims such as weight control, health, convenience or efficiency.

We find that as the day progresses, more and more people change from pursuing practical goals for breakfast to gaining the pleasure. In over 3000+ products’ name descriptions from Amazon, we find that there are more pleasure-related words ( e.g., tasty, delicious ) for breakfast compared to practical words ( e.g., nutritious, healthy ).

Whether the goals come from our culture or biology, they appear to be the psychological driver of our tendency to eat the same breakfast day after day. In that case we can have control over the goals to improve our diet. Why not have a try?

A Diet Without Enough Protein Can Cause Depression

Depression is a condition so common, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls it “a leading cause of disability.”

Difficulty in falling asleep, loss of appetite, and loss of ability to concentrate are just a few of the other effects of depression. WHO estimates that worldwide, at any one time, 350 million people suffer from the condition. While life events such as the loss of a spouse or a job may create a happening of depression, many cases come from within and are not caused by a life event.

Now scientists are working on a new aspect of cure: nutrition. 【小题1】 The Indian Journal of Psychiartry reports that both before and during a happening of depression, those with the condition will show a “poor appetite…” 【小题2】 Many cases of depression, if not most cases, affect those who don’t eat properly.

Both the human brain and nervous system use amino acids as a substance that creates a signal from one brain cell to another or one nerve cell to another, thus relaying information between the cells. What the final result then? 【小题4】

Since amino acids make up protein, a diet which lacks in protein will cause weaker communication between the brain cells. This lessens the signal being sent from one brain cell to the next during a thought. 【小题5】 This is why depression can often express itself as anger or aggression.