How aware are you of the food decisions you've made today?

Everyone of us will be influenced in our busy and distracting environments everyday, so much so that we aren't aware of large proportion of the food decisions that we make i.e., they are done mindlessly, behaviourally, habitually, and beyond our conscious awareness and ability to even remember making them! (Wansink, 2006).

These influences have important ramifications on the amount we over/consume and can lead to a false sense of security in that what we report and perceive we eat is not based on the true reality of what we actually eat.

Response bias shows up in many fields of behavioural and healthcare research where self-reported data are used. Having worked as a behavioural management specialist, using hypnotherapy since 2005, I can testify that clients' verbal and written self-reporting doesn't always reflect the reality of the change that is happening with their weight between sessions. 

Wansink, and Sobal, (2007) conducted a study to assess the extent of participants awareness of food-related decisions, and how the environment influences these decisions. 

They had 2 objectives for their study: 1) to use aggregated results of a survey to produce initial estimates of how many food-related decisions were made during a 24-hr period by normal weight, overweight, and obese people.

And 2) to examine 192 people who were involved in four different studies in which they were presented with an exaggerated cue (such as a larger serving bowl or popcorn bucket) and from which they ate 31% more than a control group, and whether they believed these exaggerated cues influenced them.

Objective 1 showed that 139 people underestimated the number of food-related decisions they made by an average of more than 221 decisions.

Of the people in the studies for objective 2, 21% denied having eaten more, 75% attributed it to other reasons (such as hunger), and only 4% attributed it to the cue.

They concluded that these studies underscore two key points: First, we are aware of only a fraction of the food decisions we make. Second, we are either unaware of how our environment influences these decisions or we are unwilling to acknowledge it.

https://journals-sagepub-com.virtual.anu.edu.au/doi/epdf/10.1177/0013916506295573
Wansink, B. and Sobal, J., 2007. Mindless eating: The 200 daily food decisions we overlook. Environment and Behavior, 39(1), pp.106-123.