Abstract
Lifestyle choices associated with food and exercise habits are fundamentally a complex decision-making process associated with many biological, social, and emotional variables. As this may be considered more difficult and time consuming, many people choose to make the simple straightforward and emotional decision influenced primarily by marketers and social media, giving consumers the perception of quick, positive predictable outcomes, even if they are inaccurate and appear too good to be true. Rather than a lack of consensus by scientists and clinicians on how to improve health and fitness, poor choices by consumers encouraged by advertisements and social trends may contribute to the continued growth of chronic illness and disability that leads to higher healthcare costs. Within this framework, modern decision-making theory may help us better understand this global problem. Marketers selling health and fitness products and services have long since seized on our tendency to respond to advertisements that promise quick-fix solutions—especially diet and exercise fads that speak to the emotionally-run limbic system and easily grab consumer attention. Unfortunately, these initiatives often prevent people from thinking about the potential benefits and risks of using such products and services, which requires a more complex decision-making cognitive process to make the same choice. Weight loss, injury prevention, and increased energy are among the common buzzwords that quickly receive consumer's attention. Terms like fresh, natural, and local, which don't necessarily imply healthy, along with many certified organic food items, can in fact be classified as junk food. These quick-fix choices often result in postponing improved health and fitness for an individual, with wide-ranging negative outcomes; consider the current overfat pandemic with its downstream diseases and disabilities in the US, where, despite rising exercise rates, 91% of adults are now affected (1, 2). Since food and exercise are known to significantly influence health and fitness, and impact the development of chronic disease, disability, and premature death (3), the processes by which individuals make lifestyle choices—and their related consequences—should be an important public health concern.
Highlights
Lifestyle choices associated with food and exercise habits are fundamentally a complex decision-making process associated with many biological, social, and emotional variables
Natural, and local, which don’t necessarily imply healthy, along with many certified organic food items, can be classified as junk food. These quick-fix choices often result in postponing improved health and fitness for an individual, with wide-ranging negative outcomes; consider the current overfat pandemic with its downstream diseases and disabilities in the US, where, despite rising exercise rates, 91% of adults are affected [1, 2]
With the added awareness of behavioral health and fitness, combined with the help of public health actions, the process of self-care that many consumers follow could improve discipline and intellectual judgment as part of a System 2 process that more likely brings long-term success. When it comes to making lifestyle choices, large numbers of people around the world who practice self-care are guided by System 1 thinking primarily from corporate marketing of health and fitness products and services that have potentially grave, unhealthy consequences. This may be significantly influencing the corresponding rise of chronic disease, physical impairment, lowered mental health, reduced quality of life, and healthcare costs
Summary
Lifestyle choices associated with food and exercise habits are fundamentally a complex decision-making process associated with many biological, social, and emotional variables. Marketers selling health and fitness products and services have long since seized on our tendency to respond to advertisements that promise quick-fix solutions—especially diet and exercise fads that speak to the emotionally-run limbic system and grab consumer attention These initiatives often prevent people from thinking about the potential benefits and risks of using such products and services, which requires a more complex decision-making cognitive process to make the same choice. The System 1 process is primarily an unconscious but natural reaction, such that one’s true underlying attitude or motivation for the decision is hard to come by, and the individual will likely provide one of several plausible rationalizations to justify how they made the decision While this system is leveraged well by marketers advertising products and services, it comes with the potential for strong bias and error referred to as cognitive illusions that can lead to reduced health and fitness. In the US, 2014 health-care costs climbed to $3.2 trillion [15], with the Kaiser Family Foundation estimating a worldwide cumulative healthcare loss of $47 trillion between 2011 and 2030
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