Answer:

We make more than 250 decisions about food every single day. Every time you open the refrigerator, watch a TV commercial, eye a billboard, or observe a friend or co-worker eating—whether you’re aware of it or not—you’re making a decision to eat or not to eat. But what sways us to choose or not to choose? Is it taste or hunger? Cost or convenience? How or where we were raised? With so many factors that influence our food choices, it’s a wonder that we ever eat consistently at all.

For most of us, by the time we’ve reached adulthood, we’ve established a pretty basic inventory of foods that we eat day in and day out. Sure, you might arrange them differently into a variety of meals and snacks, or mix them up occasionally at a restaurant. I’ll bet if I asked you what you typically eat, you could probably give me a fairly good picture of your usual diet.

For most people, taste, cost and convenience are the ‘big three’ when it comes to food choice. Of course, we want food to taste good, we want value, and we don’t want to have to work very hard to get it. Any food ad on television will tell you that. But there are more subtle influences at work, too.