In preparation for our upcoming beach trip, I unknowingly ventured into the land of "buy one/get one free" at my local grocer. I went there to buy a ham to bake for good ole ham sandwich making at the beach. It all started innocently enough, I got a bottle of lemon pepper spice for half off (you can buy one, not two, and get half off during buy one / get one free events at my local grocer). I love that about them. What I don't love is that they put those buy one / get one free deals right by the front door where I have to pass them to buy my intended target. I was fine at first, resisting everything left and right, until I ran across the frosted strawberry pop tarts. That's where trouble wore me down and followed me home.
What? Like 3 pop tarts for dinner is a bad bad thing? It's not like I ate three pop tarts in addition to dinner. My dinner consisted only of three pop tarts. Okay fine, eating three pop tarts for dinner, is a bad bad thing, no matter what. My choices are frequently so bad in fact, that I decided to finally give my inner voice room to talk. Fortuntately for it, I wasn't trying to memorize seven or more numbers when it was trying to tell me how bad making a meal out of 3 pop tarts is for me. If I had been I may have had a few more pop tarts.
Just so you know that I'm not out in left field with that seven number reference, I will rewind a bit and tell you that I have been listening to hours upon hours of RADIO LAB and have learned some very juicy scientific tidbits. One bit of information which recently caught my attention ... was mentioned in the program related to memory. Keep in mind, I inevitably miss pieces of these podcasts because my mind wanders off, and I have yet to find the rewind button on my IPOD. Soooooooooo, I was listening to this podcast about memory, and they mentioned somewhere within it that humans can easily retain about 7 digits plus or minus one ... but anything beyond that range isn't as prevalant unless achieved by lots of practice. With this in mind a group of scientific people decided to conduct a study ... they assigned certain students to remember 7 digits and walk a short way down a hallway to the next room where they would tell the person waiting there what those 7 digits were. They assigned other students to remember only 2 digits and walk a short way down a hallway to the next room where they would tell the person waiting there what those 2 digits were. During the short walk both sets of students, those assigned to memorize 7 digits, and those assigned to memorize 2 digits .... were met in the hallway before they reached the next room by a young woman who offered them a snack for participating in the study. The young woman offered them a choice of an ooey gooey piece of chocolate cake or a fruit salad. They found that the overwhelming majority of students who were to remember 2 digits chose the fruit salad, and that the overwhelming majority of students who were to remember 7 digits chose the ooey goody piece of chocolate cake. The resulting theory ... when humans are "stressing" their brains they don't have as much rational brain left to use so they revert to their emotional brain.
Ding ding ding ... it is in our heads, but not in our imaginations, that we overindulge and make very poor choices when we are overtaxing our rational brains. I can't say I was mentally overtaxed when I bought those pop tarts -- that was nothing but temptation (look ... you love pop tarts ... look, they are on sale ... look ... they have one box of strawberry frosted pop tarts left ... you know they are your favorite ... go ahead buy them, you hardly ever buy them). Temptation won in spite of my stress free state of mind. However, there are too many times at work when my rational side has been beleaguered by stress and I make very poor choices. So, very recently, while I was in a very stress free state of mind, and nobody was asking me to memorize 7 digits, I made the conscious decision to start a food diary in an effort to combat the choices instigated by stress. I'm not on a diet, I'm on a mission to have glowing skin and a sharper than sharp brain. I want to eat better for my overall well being. Although I am only in day two of the food diary, and although the food diary hasn't stopped every bad choice, I can already see that it is going to prove itself as a serious opponent when it faces off with BUY ONE // GET ONE FREE.
Disclaimer: Sorry for any typos, bad grammar, blah blah blah. I'm sleepy.
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crikey I have not had pop tarts since I was like 7. I have to say I was never a fan of them. Or maybe never had the option of eating them. I didn't even have the option of having soda till I was in junior high and there was a soda machine, which no one could stop me from using. My mom was more a fan of making eggs, porridge, and such things as that. coincidentally I would rather go hungry than eat porridge now that I do have a choice. I still don't like pop tarts or soda though.
ReplyDelete@Jay -- Good for your mom! I wish I didn't like pop tarts, soda, cake, cookies, snickers bars. Hmmm what else? Well everything else that is a poor food choice. But alas, I do, and it's a constant struggle to eat well.
ReplyDeleteHow do you have 3 poptarts? Don't they come two in a foil package? :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting memory workings theory. I've always had severe problems remembering 7 (now 10) digits looked up in a phonebook long enough to dial it... Now I can say, "Hey, mon, I'm just stressed out..."
Our short-term memory is a tricky beast. I can remember place names but not people names... license plate numbers but not phone numbers... go figure.. (and please send help when you get it figured out!)
@IG: You can eat three pop tarts because four foiled packets come in one box of pop tarts.
ReplyDeleteMy spelling skills are starting to suffer. Too many times lastely my memory fails me, and I find myself at a spelling loss. Oh well, I think spellcheck is the culprit, but I may be fooling myself.
I LOVE the brown sugar pop tart I used to have it for lunch everyday.
ReplyDeleteI went shopping last night, and I had to suffer with those buy one get one free deals too. I wanted two bags of mixed veggies, so that was perfect. But two bags of chips? Uh, thats trouble. I also wanted to buy some sea salt... just to try it out and the offer was two for the price of one. Eek.