- One experience I have had in dealing with social norms and food choice was at a seafood buffet in Maryland. I really dislike most types of seafood, but I was with my girlfriend’s family. One of their main goals on this vacation was to eat at this particular restaurant. It was about $30 per person, and they paid for me to enter. After such a high price I felt pressured to at least try a large variety of foods. I did not enjoy any of it, and out of six full plates I wasted about 3/4 of the food. I felt terrible for wasting it, but they assured me that it was fine, because we were at a buffet and people wasted food all the time, and we essentially paid for the food anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
- This leads to a social issue of food waste, which in turn causes environmental issues. The food that I personally wasted, and the food that other people consistently waste leads to an abundance of over-fishing. I was overwhelmed by the high price to try as much food as I could and “get my monies worth” but at the expense of wasting food. Even though I wasn’t paying any additional money, I was paying for it in environmental costs. After my terrible experience I ended up just going to McDonald’s and eating very cheap food, which was essentially wasteful because I had already had so much other food. The social norm should be if you don’t like food, don’t get it instead of trying to “get your monies worth.”
3 thoughts on “Food Choice and Social Norms – Hollabaugh”
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Hi! My name is Ben Bishop and i am a freshman at UP studying biomedical engineering! I thoroughly enjoyed your post due to your example of the sea food restaurant. I think this is a great example of how social norms affect eating choices. I also thought you did a great job in your diagram because it displays the effects of your actions and choices made due to norms.
please check out mine at-http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/obesity-and-the-social-norms-that-clash-against-it/
sorry i forgot to include that in my first comment
Hi Hollabaugh, I’m Tyler. I also don’t like seafood and usually try to avoid the expensive seafood buffets in Maryland. It’s nice that you addressed how much food you were wasting. I feel bad when I get something I don’t like at the dining commons and end up composting it. In my article I talked about eating too much meat and the health risks associated with it. Here’s a link: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/module-six-food-choice-and-social-norms/