In the closing paragraph to his latest "The Frontal Cortex" entry, Jonah Lehrer writes::

"Maybe this is why Americans need ever larger portion sizes: Because we didn’t make the milkshake ourselves, because that dinner only required a few minutes of work, we need to consume more calories to get the same baseline of satisfaction. The solution to this problem, of course, is simple: We need to take time to make dinner. Instead of buying frozen french fries, make a risotto. The 30 minutes of stirring will make the end result much more delicious."

A very interesting perspective on the effect that technology has on our diets. It isn't necessarily that we have access to much more junk food than ever before, it's that we spend far less time working for our meals than we used to; and thus we feel the need to eat more.

Could this same perspective carry over to drug addiction? Could a junky who finds himself with a higher-than-normal yield of his substance of choice be more prone to overdosing, since less work is required to obtain the drug? What about internet use? Does the act of searching the web actually make us less motivated to reading lengthy text once we find it, as opposed to opening a newspaper and reading it to completion? Or does price factor into our decision as well? Hard to say, but interesting nonetheless.

Tags: Frontal Cortex, scienceblogs, jonah lehrer, obesity, cooking, addiction, dopamine, reward system, he,

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