The Danger of the Upsell

Do I want fries with that? Heck yes, I do! Add avocado? Sure! Everything on it? Is there any other way?

I am a few days in to my most recent 24 Day Challenge - and I confess I had a few cheats last night - but the type of food I am consuming, the amount of water, and the type of food I'm fueling my body with is very much on my mind. I came across two indepth articles today that address both the quality and quantity and the trend of what consumers are consuming.

Via today's Gothamist:

How Chain Restaurant Menus Encourage You To Order More

"Those glossy photos on restaurant menus aren't just appetite-building food porn—they're also integral in making you order more. In a fascinating piece on the science behind chain restaurant menus, Megan Garber at The Atlantic examines the process behind menu design and how it influences a customer's order and also a restaurant's bottom line. With quick service chains like Chipotle leading the market, sit-down chains have reevaluated the focus of their menus, trimming down where necessary and engineering menus that engage consumers in a more efficient way.

One of those brands is IHOP, which began an overhaul of its extensive menu to figure out how to better present their options. "Because the menu's so long and difficult to navigate, even our most heavy guests were not aware of the breadth of our offering," explained IHOP head of marketing Natalia Franco. The IHOP team employed multiple methods to test drive different menu designs, including focus groups, in-store food sales data and eye-tracking studies. "As part of those bigger studies,” Franco says, “we clearly knew that improving and optimizing our menu was priority number one." Ultimately, they chose a "catalog" style, which relied heavily on food imagery, color coding and a grouping system that organized dishes by food types.

Customers responded and the chain saw a 3.6% increase in sales, thanks in large part to "selection and upsell." It turns out that the new menus meant guests ordered sides and drinks more than they did before and also were more compelled to try different and "new" menu items. “Now guests and consumers are self-identifying products that they think are new,” explains Franco. There's no doubt in her mind: “Our guests are ordering additional items because of the appeal of the menu.”

Applebee's and other chains like Joe's Crab Shack undergo similar menu makeovers that incorporate things like color variations and visual cues about "healthier" dishes. It's an incredibly complex system that'll leave you feeling a bit manipulated—or just resigned to the fact that we're helpless against subliminal direction. Who's for pancakes?"

The Atlantic article is a longer read, but explores the engineering of a chain restaurant menu in greater detail.

The bottom line here is that as food consumers we have choices all day, everyday. I ask you, how many times a day do you make the Brain to Belly connection? I know when I do it changes my consumption in a significant way.

The V Word

One of the goals that I set out to accomplish with the concept of From Brain to Belly was to share not only my own thoughts and experience with the psychology, sociology and chemistry of food, but also the experiences of others'. And for this I have asked several friends to guest blog on topics that will help educate and inspire others. Some of the issues that I have witnessed those close to me experience include not only living with but showing who's boss to Type I Diabetes, the concept of "the family that we choose" family dinners and the benefits of an ecologically conscious, plant based diet.

For my first guest blog installment my good friend, the talented, creative Edith Tsacle is sharing her experiences in not only changing her "diet" but how she and her sweet husband Al changed their lifestyle in amazing leaps and bounds:

"Full disclosure: I am very fond of Holly. I am proud of her and her accomplishments, her overcoming many adversities, and remaining a kind-hearted, sweet, bright young woman. When she asked me to write a guest blog for her newly launched blog, I was very happy and honored. I also loved the title: From Brain to Belly, a title that is so very appropriate to describe the journey that I (with my husband) have taken in the last 2 years, a journey Holly asked me to share. This journey has taken us into previously mostly unchartered territory, both of our "brain" and "belly", and ended up connecting them both. Let me explain:

Around 3 years ago, Al (my husband) left on a family business trip to Greece. He stopped in to see my brother, who was in the hospital, having just had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass (he was 61) While there, Al found he had a very swollen leg and was urged to go to the emergency center of the hospital. He had a blood clot in his leg! After 3 weeks of excellent care he was told to abort his original plan to continue to Greece and fly home, which he did. He was put on blood thinners. A few months later, I ended up in the hospital with a TIA (a mild stroke), high blood pressure, borderline diabetes, high cholesterol, and I was 40 lbs. overweight. I know that one can live with medication for all this (with all their side-effects, which one takes added medications for), but it took a few months before I found myself watching a video, "Forks Over Knives", an excellent documentary showing how simple it is to eliminate all the meds by eliminating the cause of all these problems. What a concept!

Al had gotten the diagnoses from his doctor after a year on blood thinners, that he will have to be on the medication (an ingredient in rat poison!) for the rest of his life, since they were not dissolving the clot. I was in dire straights, not knowing when the next stroke will come. So I made the decision, that we would change our diet to the diet prescribed by renownd surgeon, clinician and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and so many other well known doctors featured in the "Forks over Knives" video.

Well, we quickly realized it was not a "diet", meaning, a method of counting calories and strict limits on quantity of food intake, but it was a way of eating that expanded our options enormously and we never had to count calories or watch our servings. It's what you eat! My weight miraculously just kept coming off quickly and we were always satiated and extremely happy with all the delicious meals that we prepared. After 4 months, Al was scheduled to go for another routine check up. The following day, he got a call from the doctors office, saying that he can stop all medications and that they couldn't find the blood clot! He thought he didn't hear right and they mixed up the tests. No, he was free! I went in to have my check up, and the doctor had me re-take the blood test (cholesterol, saying it can't be right, it was so low). The next one showed it even lower, and he then gradually took me off all medications. We are both elated, needless to say. I had lost 40 lbs. in a matter of 6 months, completely effortlessly, gained an enormous amount of energy and stamina (without "exercise", although that is really important too and it's my resolution now to increase it). Now this new eating plan also had more "side effects" than arriving at one's optimal healthy weight, having increased energy and losing all medications and much more that I mentioned.

I will share some additional effects on the brain as well as belly that we were not prepared for in the next segment, along with a photo and recipe (if I can narrow it down to one …)