When people talk about their emotional drivers behind the urge to go shopping, we could have just as easily substituted the word eating.
We often find ourselves as emotional eaters or frequent shoppers which when we have a closer look shows 2 distinct parallels.
A lot of socialising is associated with catching up at cafés and eating, and when we catching up with our friends will often meet at a café will come around to our house and have a tea or coffee with cake.
Quite often shopping is also a social event to catch up with friends.
Shopping can make ourselves feel better, to feel better about ourselves and to reward ourselves.
So before we know we have created that downward cycle of needing that hit of excitement which quickly dissipates once these items are in taken home.
Then we may experience buyers remorse as to why you spent the money on these unnecessary purchases when your wardrobe is full of clothes. Similarly you may go out and eat plenty of yummy food which may not necessarily be healthy for you.
Some time passes and your purchases or what you have consumed is forgotten and you get into that downward spiral of feeling down or needing a lift so you go shopping again or o buy some food.
Like any habit that we are trying to break and introduce healthier habits, we need to find the underlining driver behind our behavior.
But first we need to acknowledge that our behavior is a be added control or not manageable or more importantly acting on our house or our financial position.
So we really need to take ownership and identify how much we are actually spending on shopping or alternatively what and how much we eating per day so we can actually quantify the effects of our behavior. This is the first step in bringing about change.
With two thirds of the Australian population overweight or obese, there really needs to be some regulations regarding food packaging and advertising. KFC latest product, the Double Down Burger users the Man time copy line, with a massive 1939 kJ.
While a person’s daily energy intake will vary depending on your age, sex, body size and the level of activity that you engage in, a 31-year-old to 50-year-old male weighing 71 kg requires 8300kj per day based on no physical activities, just to sustain life.
So in just one sitting without the added chips or soft drink nearly a quarter of the days energy requirements are up represented by this fat laden burger (22.3gms).
This advertisement appeared on Facebook under a clients profile who is in their mid-20s. This type of advertising is extremely clever as it targets teenage boys who see the high levels of fat as a gastronomic challenge while men may find this targeting their masculinity.
This is a classic case where food labeling is required that identifies this as a high health risk product given the high percentage of energy and fat.
A tax on energy dense foods would make such products extremely expensive and would remove their attractiveness as a product to be consumed on a regular basis.
This is a classic example where one would need to really evaluate KFC’s motivation in bringing out such a highly energy dense product when they’re recommending that the clients climb the stairs to burn 930 kJ which is just under half the energy contained with this one burger.
Without singling out KFC, the other fast food companies are hardly squeaky clean with hungry Jack’s ultimate double whopper burger packing our humongous 5085 kJ and McDonald’s the Mac having 2060 kJ. I guess the most disturbing thing about the KFC double down burger is the fact that there is no bread and vegetables whatsoever, just meat or rather processed meat and preservatives.
Hopefully this product stimulates a lot of debate about advertising standards, food packaging and perhaps even a energy tax.
It’s interesting to see the rules changing of the AFL (Australian Footy League) that is seeing the game being more endurance based.
Over the last few years we have seen elite athletes in any form of sport perform at incredible heights as technology, coaching and management improves each and every year. For years now we have seen AFL transform from raw ability to a combination of raw ability with unbelievable player management – optimising the influence that player has on the game.
It seems the management of players has a more vital role in the success of the team rather than just simple individual brilliance. This has been observed through the frantic pace that AFL these days is now played at. In the last decade the game has transformed from aerobic training and adaption to almost sole anaerobic adaption, meaning short, hard intervals, rest, and repeat the process. Now it seems as though the emphasis has reverted back to the ‘old school – aerobic’ method in combination with the ‘new school – anaerobic’
However at the commencement of the 2011 season we have already seen the physical strain that the new rule change has placed on our elite athletes. The effects of prolonged and sustained physical efforts has come as quite a surprise to some, as the adaption to remodeling the physiological construct of the human body has taken more time than perceived.
For years elite AFL players have fined tuned they aerobic and anaerobic fitness based on the style of the game, now that the style of game has been altered through rule changes, that extra couple of minutes of game time has affected what they have been so accustomed too.
To understand the physiological changes and demands on the body through the change would require significant research and testing, but through generalized analysis we can come to the conclusion or at least hypothesis that there is a threshold in physical performance or at least a significant adaption process where changing a finely tuned individual takes time.
With Australia’s two major supermarket chains vying to increase their market share, the latest battle ground is using loss leader practices with aggressive discounting. These tactics initially targeted the milk industry which has had disastrous effects for dairy farmers. Now the supermarkets are using beer loss leading discounting practices to entice shoppers into their supermarkets.
The motivation is that the customer will come to the supermarket, in this case Coles to buy a slab of VB which usually retails for $38 (The cost is $33 but it in this instance the supermarkets are selling the carton or slab of the or at $28 which is well below the cost price of the beer) in the belief of attracting sales of non discounted products.
Apparently this isn’t the first instance where the supermarkets have adopted this practice with beer products.
With the recent fiasco over the Alco pops and the irresponsible behavior of the beverage companies, using alcohol to entice new shoppers/customers is both irresponsible and neglecting their obligation to put the community ahead of their own self-interests or perhaps maximising shareholder value.
With the massive increase in drunken violence and irresponsible drinking behavior amongst teenagers and young adults, encouraging people to purchase alcohol below cost is sending out very disturbing messages to the public. The most disturbing point is that they’re actually selling beer cheaper than bottled water which is absolutely ridiculous.
The other factors that needs to be taken into consideration is promoting responsible drinking, and given the increasing trend of alcohol consumption across the wine and spirits heavily discounting alcohol, especially to entice people into a retail establishment can be deemed to be not promoting the safe consumption of alcohol.
A recent 2007 survey showed that nearly 50% of males consume beer so making the purchase of beer more attractive will lead to increased consumption.
And unusual support was taking place in the Chile streets, an urban downhill bike riding called the The Valparaiso Cerro Abajo held in Valparaiso.
It’s great to see the evolution of sports that make the most of their environment to add a new dimension of excitement. While most traditional downhill bike races take place on the side of mountains with a single track course weaving its way through the trees and other obstacles, this urban downhill race involved massive drops from one street level to another, descending steep staircases, avoiding random dogs and moving along at high speeds avoiding many obstacles of this urban landscape.
While one wouldn’t consider Chile to have a race attracting international attention, it shows you that anything is possible when you truly believe.
The video was filmed using a similar helmet mounted camera to what we use to fill but filming our red suits around Melbourne.
One of the most amusing parts of the video is when a representative from the UCI, which is the international cycling Federation was trying to explain to the Chilean writer about the perils of not wearing sufficient body armor to protect himself.
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