Mindful Consumption in the Casino of Consumerism
The house always wins.
The U.S. leads the world in consumption — and that isn’t a point of pride. Despite an uptick in minimalism, the American dream predominantly consists of buying a grander house, constantly upgrading to the latest cell phone, and purchasing whatever celebrities or social media influencers endorse.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.”
Allowing our attention to be distracted by shopping, food, drugs, porn, or information enables us to set aside our troubles. Yet there’s another way to soothe our anxieties — being mindful and fully in the present. When we focus on the now, we aren’t ruminating over the past or anxious about the future.
Who’s Accountable?
Americans have shaped business models with our low expectations. We vote with our dollars to tell manufacturers “we don’t mind a cheap (as in shoddy) product as long as it’s cheap (as in bargain price).”
The seeds of our throw-away mentality have been sown and cultivated by companies, particularly in tech, who plan their products for obsolescence so we’re forced to upgrade. Does it seem like electronics and appliances don’t last as long as they used to?
Likewise, companies can cut costs on customer service because Americans accept being stuck in a phone tree or AI chatbot hell for 10 minutes, then on hold for another 15, before finally being connected to outsourced overseas workers who may not understand English well and operate from an algorithmic script.
The House Always Wins
Are we making mindful choices, or are we manipulated into making choices that we believe are free will?
We can be nudged toward addictive behaviours. Companies spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours figuring out how to exploit the brain’s reward loop with likes from social media interactions or bliss points of sugar and fat in processed foods. Countless amounts of money and time are also spent by legal teams and lobbyists to circumvent or influence government regulations.
As with top leadership in drug cartels, many executives at junk food or social media companies aren’t heavy users (aka addicts) of their company’s products and limit their children’s usage. Likewise, the scientists that create illicit drugs, processed foods, and social media platforms aren’t heavy adopters of their own creations.
So if the sellers aren’t embracing their own merchandise, their primary objective probably isn’t spreading peace, health, and happiness — it’s financial gain.
Scientists may be more motivated by humanitarian or egotistical intentions than money. Yet science isn’t immune to unintentional bias. Even without tampering with data, results can vary based on how the data is interpreted.
Meanwhile, consumers don’t have the knowledge or time to stay up to date on company practices, safety research, or legal regulations to make educated decisions to use products.
What can you do? Besides being more mindful, you can choose to opt-out — don’t bother playing the game because the house always wins.
It’s All Connected
Zoom out and consider the big picture. For example, many traditional studies have found the herbicide glyphosate to be safe to humans — it was designed to attack a metabolic process in plants and microbes, not animals. However, later studies that looked at the herbicide more holistically discovered that it kills bacteria in our gut microbiome, indirectly leading to serious health problems. Old toxicology research that neglected the global perspective also overlooked the adverse effects of glyphosate when mixed with other chemicals in real-world applications.
Likewise, artificial sweeteners used in diet foods have been touted as healthy alternatives to sugar because they have zero calories and don’t raise blood sugar. However, more recent investigations have revealed that artificial sweeteners can change the microbiome, which can result in diabetes, obesity, and other long-term health issues.
Another example of the interconnectedness of everything is the Amazon rainforest. The consequences of cutting down trees in the Amazon include habitat destruction and declining biodiversity; loss of carbon sinks, which contributes to global warming; and disruption of the water cycle, which can cause soil erosion, flooding, and drought.
Mindful Consumption of Food Nourishes Our Bodies
Not being mindful of what we put in our bodies — processed food, herbicides and pesticides, antibiotics from feedlot meat — can lead to chronic diseases. Overconsumption of food also damages our environment by crowding landfills, destroying rainforests to raise cattle, and overfishing our oceans.
When you eat mindfully, you’re in tune with your body and don’t overconsume. If you’re not distracted by your cell phone or television while you eat, you’ll be aware of when you’re full and stop.
You’ll listen to your body and nourish it with foods that it desires instead of catering to the brain or appetite’s cravings. Your brain might want candy, but your body won’t.
Processed foods are easy to overconsume. Whole foods that have been refined lose nutrients while becoming concentrated in calories. Sugar cane contains about 15% sucrose. Yet when it has been converted into white sugar, its sucrose content is over 99%.
Food manufacturers process food to extend shelf life and increase profits. Removing the nutritious bran and germ that spoil quickly in whole grains leaves only the starchy endosperm, hence the term “empty calories.”
Besides conducting extensive research on engineering their products to make customers eat more, processed food companies also do market research on the best placement of their merchandise in stores and other strategies to capture their target audience. So be mindful when shopping for food. Don’t be deceived by advertising.
I teach healthy eating and am constantly asked about processed health food. Who sponsored the studies promoting the product? Even if the evidence seems legitimate (for now, as long-term studies are rare), that doesn’t mean that the processed version is as nutritious as the whole food or the quality control is good.
For example, eating wild salmon has been shown to benefit health, but that doesn’t mean that fish oil supplements are healthful. Nor does it suggest that fish oil supplements are equal in quality, which can vary depending on the handling of the fish before harvesting, method of oil extraction, and storage conditions.
Despite doing your due diligence, the house has an inherent advantage — our laws don’t require labels to disclose everything. So rather than trying to outsmart food conglomerates, opt-out of processed foods.
Mindful Consumption of Information Frees Our Minds
As we have shifted from the industrial to the technological age, consumption has correspondingly switched from material goods to information. Websites, video games, movies, and books compete for our attention.
Be mindful when you consume information that has been curated for you. Just as processed food is incentivized by profit, so is the media. News outlets and social media earn more money by keeping your attention. The more exciting the news, especially if it is fear-driven, the more you will be fixated, wanting to find out more.
Besides soliciting your attention, information sources want to shape your opinions — such as being aligned with the political and financial interests of the owner(s) of the news outlet.
It’s not your fault that social media hijacks your mind. Tech companies spend an inordinate amount of time and money reiterating their products to control your attention! Watch the documentary, The Social Dilemma to learn more.
Action Steps
-Opt-out of the game when possible and practice mindful consumption when you choose to play the game.
-Try a taste of mindfulness and other ways of connecting to your inner self with my book, A Meditation Tasting: 12 Easy Practices from Fun to Formal.
-Learn healthy eating and cooking, and gain a holistic perspective of our food system from my book, Nature’s Palette: A Food Journey.
-Find out how food manufacturers addict us in Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss.
