Hutton Honors College

What's for Dinner? The Personal and Political Implications of Our Food Choices

November 20, 2008

At this program, IU professors Peter Todd of cognitive science and Christine Barbour of political science spoke to students about how we make decisions about food and what some of the personal and wider-ranging consequences of these choices are.

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Students were offered a selection of healthy and less healthy drinks. Toward the end of the evening, the quantities of each type of drink that were consumed were tabulated. The most popular choice was juice, followed by water, diet soda, and regular soda.

Each table had four bowls of snacks for the students to eat: one of regular potato chips, one of baked potato chips, one of multi-colored candies, and one of all red candies. Later in the evening, student volunteers measured whether students consumed more of some options than others.

Students enjoyed the snacks at their tables while discussing the factors they thought important in making decisions about food.

Students serve themselves ice cream going through two different lines: one with small scoops and one with large scoops. According to research in the field, the students with the larger scoops should have eaten more ice cream, but that wasn't the case for this group!

Christine Barbour, a professor in the Department of Political Science and a food writer, talks about Slow Food Bloomington, which she co-directs. Slow Food Bloomington is part of "an international movement that emphasized eating seasonally, regionally, and pleasurably."