It’s Foodie Friday! Today I’d like us to contemplate the foods that make us hungry. No, I don’t mean the ones for which we have cravings. I mean food that can actually increase your hunger when you eat them.
Have you ever wondered why bars put out salty snacks like popcorn or peanuts or pretzels? As it turns out, salt makes you thirsty and what better place to be when you’re thirsty than your favorite watering hole? Salt, according to some studies, is addictive, as is sugar and fat. The food industry has become very good at layering those things together to create products (I’m deliberately not saying “foods”) that play to our addictions, light up our dopamine centers, and cause us to engage in self-destructive behaviors. When you hear the old Lay’s slogan about “bet you can’t just eat just one,” you might try to think about what the drug pusher says as they give away their free samples to people: “don’t worry – you’ll be back.”
The screed today isn’t meant to be a lecture on improving our eating habits. Instead, there is a business point here. We don’t eat salty snacks or sugary foods or processed foods or even foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners (they made you hungry too) to get fat. We eat them to solve an immediate need – hunger. But there is any number of other options that can fill that need without triggering the problems that come from really unhealthy foods.
It’s the same in business. We often take the easiest or most available or cheapest solution to solve an immediate need. Unfortunately, those “fast food” solutions only solve the problem in the near term and can often cause long-term damage. Just as with food, we need to be aware of our cravings and think before we eat. We need to consider all of the options, not just the “fast food” ways out. We need to choose more wisely, not just more expeditiously.
Make sense?
Consult Keith 
As a chef, we actually look incredibly farther afield for things that impact customer food choices. Some are so ambient that they may surprise such as the colour of the plates we use to the smell of the soap in the washrooms. The weight of a spoon can make a bowl of soup feel “cheap” or the cushion on a chair can feel decadent even as you dine on basic roast chicken. Can fast food deliver a ‘memorable’ meal even as it under-delivers on nutrition and substance. That one night at Whataburger with my cousins after a Friday night football game in a tiny little East Texas town will forever stay with me. The heat of the day, the smell of fire works in the air. A great read on the topic is Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence.