The problem of hyper-stimuli

The problem of hyper-stimuli is the term I have chosen for all the issues caused by the fact that technology has produced more exciting versions of something we are biologically driven to seek out. Our food is enhanced by processing to be calorie dense. Our screens can simulate and satiate the drive for competition (video games) and sex (porn) far better than the real world.

These hyper-stimuli can trick us to seek out the simulation not the genuine article.

We are not the only species struggling with the problem of artificially created hyper-stimuli. Beetles in central Australia started to die out after preferring to mate with stubbie tops over females of their species as the bottle tops were shinier than the shiny female beetles.

But humans have been very inventive, so it is not simply by accident that hyper-stimuli have entered the environment, we have actively put them there.

Some of the effects of this has been the focus of governments such as the obesity crisis while others governments seem determined to ignore such as the lost boys crisis written about by Nicholas Eberstadt.

The Obesity Crisis

The Obesity crisis is the one symptom of the entrance of hyper-stimuli that Governments around the world actually care about – but conveniently are forgetting their part in its creation.

The hyper-processed food, which is the defining factor of the problem, started with a plan hatched by government to prevent future food shortages by enlisting major food companies to create food that has three main characteristics which are now the hallmarks of the hyper-processed food we consume.

Palatable, portable, and plentiful

Palatability is caused by the abundance of foods that would have been very rewarding to our ancestors. There is the particular golden goose of food that can be both sweet and fatty. In the wild there are no foods that are sweet and fatty – but lots of foods that are sweet or fatty – and we are programmed to hunt them out (sometimes literally) as they are particularly energy dense, and exactly the food we needed to fuel our big brains.

Portability is driven by to two factors, the first being the ability to preserve food for long periods of time (or to make them shelf-stable) and that a small amount contains a lot of calories. I think of the paleo bars in my locker at work, despite all pretense of being healthy they are small, shelf-stable nuggets of food that have been processed to be that way. This is achieved through processing that removes many of the nutrients whilst preserving the energy density. Even rudimentary processing techniques like drying food has this effect. By not including nutrients like fiber in sweet foods – which is something typically found together in nature like fruit - or protein from fatty foods which again is typically found as a package deal – like nuts, we have all the cues of foods we are programmed to seek out but none of the nutrients that are crucial. Particularly when you considered that these are the very parts of food that help us to feel full.

Plentifulness is simply that there is an abundance. This is perhaps the Achilles heel for many people, we couldn't gorge ourselves and over-eat if the food was merely very delicious (and energy dense) and able to be stored. It is the fact that there is an abundance of foods and no signal to stop eating them a lot of the time (see the previous paragraph) that drives the obesity crisis.