Factors Influencing Food Selection

There are several different factors that play a vital role in the way consumers purchase a variety of foods. There are many different issues that influence of food selection. Food choice have been changing in a rapid pace over the past decades. In your own mind you know that the food you eat is bad for you, but you eat it anyway. As time goes on and we see what the food is doing to us, we begin to blame the food industry's for making us this way. The best thing to do would be making smarter decisions on the choices we make when we eat or even in general.

Food companies use food science to make people more likely to buy their products. In “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” Michael Moss focuses on the rising numbers of obesity

In “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate” by Marion Nestle, points out that supermarket retailers know more than you could possibly imagine about how to push you to buy their products. She claims that supermarket companies control people to buy goods by using a strategy. Nestle introduces a tactic that supermarkets use to increase their profits. The tactic they use is the particular way of how they place the products, surveys or membership cards that they give to customers and even coordinations with food companies. Nestle claims “From their prospective, it is your problem if what you buy makes you eat more food than you need and more of the wrong kinds of foods in particular”. Nestle is trying to make it clear that us the consumers, it is our responsibility to be aware of what we eat. I feel that this is true even though supermarkets use tactics that people have never been aware of, the final decision is on the customer. Nestle again begins a claim by saying “ Food retailers argue that if you eat too much it is your problem, not theirs”(503). She back up this claim by talking to different business groups about the problem and one supermarket manager insisted that his store does not force customers to buy Pepsi in big bottles. I see this in a way that companies are just trying to make the food better but not healthier and by that it is our choice to buy and eat

In “Food As Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” Mary Maxfield makes it clear that food and nutrition industry’s are taking the most out of our diet plans”. Maxfield states that there is barriers that are going to mess with us. Maxfield claims “There are a lot of pressures and barriers in this world that get in our way, that confuse us, that distract us and attempt to control us in counterproductive ways”(445). What she is trying to point out is that food companies are trying to bargain us to get us to buy their products. Maxfield introduces Michael Pollan and claims “Pointing to what he considers the American paradox- a notably unhealthy population preoccupied with . . . the idea of eating healthy”(442). Pollan states that the way we see healthy eating is funded by a corporate machine. According to Pollan he brings up that the food industry along with nutrition science and journalism is capitalizing on our confusion on how we eat. Pollan backs up his claims with the concerns over American health. I agree with Pollan's view and how it's not the eater it's the food industry. I feel that there should be better ways for food industrys to make healthier food and attract more customers at the same