Economic Stressors and the Demand for "Fattening" Foods

Trenton Smith ()

No 2011-1, Working Papers from School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University

Abstract: A broad and growing literature suggests that uncertainty with respect to income, employment, and/or the financial resources necessary to buy food may cause people to gain weight. The theory—inspired by theory and evidence from behavioral ecology—posits that economic insecurity triggers a physiological fattening response, but the mechanisms by which weight gain occurs (e.g., physical activity, caloric intake, dietary quality, basal metabolism, depression) are not known. This paper reviews and synthesizes evidence supporting a dietary quality mechanism, in which economic insecurity triggers a shift in food preferences toward “fattening” foods. Interestingly, the foods to which individuals appear to be drawn under these circumstances are those which the anthropological evidence suggests would have been eaten (in pre-industrial societies) during periods of seasonal food scarcity

Keywords: obesity; glycemic effects; stress; evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D87 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2011-03
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://faculty.ses.wsu.edu/WorkingPapers/TSmith/wp2011-1.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://faculty.ses.wsu.edu/WorkingPapers/TSmith/wp2011-1.pdf [307 Temporary Redirect]--> https://ses.wsu.edu/faculty/)

Related works:
Journal Article: Economic Stressors and the Demand for "Fattening" Foods (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsu:wpaper:tgsmith-8

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Danielle Engelhardt ().