Your Food Environment is like your ‘Nutritional Subconscious’.
Managing your food environment has the potential to make eating for your goals easier and takes willpower out of the equation. With some proper planning and minimal upkeep, you can manipulate your environment in such a way to cause you to think about food a little less, reduce the number of temptations you face, and make it easier for you to make better choices.
Food Environment Guidelines For Success:
If it’s not immediately in your environment, you’re probably not going to eat it. In some cases, the best decision might be to not purchase something in the first place.
Keep the calorie-dense, low-satiety food (chips, cakes, lollies, chocolates, ice-cream etc.) in less visible and less convenient locations.
If you want a nutrient-dense food to be prevalent in your diet, make it prevalent in your environment.
For example, keep a fruit bowl in plain sight in your kitchen so you can easily see AND access it.
Keep refrigerated vegetables on the front and middle shelves of your refrigerator, and keep more calorie-dense refrigerated items near the back and on top or bottom shelves
Generally speaking, food variety may increase food consumption. Keep a wide variety of foods you want to eat more of (like fruits, vegetables, and lean protein sources), and keep a narrow variety of indulgence foods.
If you are serving food out of large bowls/containers, do not keep the serving bowls at the table. Leave them on a counter or in the kitchen so you have to portion your food on your plate and bring the plate to the table. This makes it less likely that you’ll keep adding more food to your plate.
This same strategy applies to snack foods. If you tend to graze, stop hanging out in the kitchen!
Likewise, if you’re at a social event, creating physical distance from certain foods can be quite helpful.
Make building new nutritional habits easier and make continuing old habits more difficult.
What This All Comes Down To:
Foods that you should be eating MORE of need to be more visible, more convenient, more prevalent, and of greater variety in your environment.
Foods that you need to eat LESS of should be less visible, less convenient, less prevalent, and of lower variety (in some cases nonexistent!) in your environment
What you purchase determines what ends up in your food environment. Make sure you purchase a variety of the foods you want to eat more of, and make sure you limit the foods you want to eat less of. When you bring those foods home, take the time to display or position them accordingly in your food environment.
A way we can create a goal aligned environment is by trying the traffic light system.
TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM
Arguably the most influential in a person's decision making is the environment someone is in day to day. It can be the foods they see or have available, advertising, triggers, cues and even the people they spend their time with or are influenced by.
People blame themselves or their personal traits and they underestimate the external factors that influence their behaviour.
People expect themselves to be strong-willed in tempting situations whilst also trying to do their jobs and complete other personal tasks that require energy. Willpower requires energy too, so the less energy you have from practising willpower or completing tasks during the day, the tougher it is going to be to say no to temptation and to make a healthy eating choice when presented with an easier, less goal aligned options.
This activity helps to take willpower out of the equation and make goal aligned choices easier.
Try to keep tempting foods that aren’t goal aligned out of your environment. Create an effort barrier between you and the indulgence items. You can’t eat what isn’t there. On the flip side, create a food environment that is aligned with your goals. Lean proteins, plenty of plants (fresh and/or frozen), fibrous carbs, healthy fats - the ones you enjoy in a wide variety, highly visible and easy to consume. Keep the more tempting foods in less variety, less visible and more difficult to consume.
Green foods mean good to consume regularly - these foods are goal aligned, you enjoy them, they are good for your body and mind.
Yellows are sometimes ok, sometimes not - can be an occasional treat without going too overboard or have you craving them as soon as you see them.
Red foods are probably not a good idea to have in your environment because they are trigger foods, have you feel unwell or aren’t aligned with your goals (not to say they can’t ever be eaten, probably just not a good idea to be regularly visible or attainable especially when trying to build new healthy eating habits).
Important note:
Not to say red lights can never be in the environment, the temptation level can change over time as habits are built.
Ultimately we want to try to make your lives easier when it comes to making nutritious food choices that are aligned with your goals.