Consumerism and Health: Big Houses, Big Cars, Big Waistlines, Big Anxiety, Little Health

colinchamp August 2, 2019 13 Comments

In James Suzman’s book Affluence without Abundance, he chronicles the history and ultimate decline of the world’s modern hunter gatherers due to western expansion into Africa. Suzman is apt to write this depiction, as he has been spending significant time with the Ju’/hoansi Bushmen in the eastern Kalahari for over 25 years. He describes them as the ultimate affluent society; they only worked for 15 hours a week hunting and gathering food, and spent the remaining abundance of time relaxing. Not only did they have an affluence of time, but they desired little else in regards to material goods. Once they acquired enough food to satisfy their appetites and nutritional requirements – the basic needs of life – they simply stopped gathering food and eating. Beyond adequate food, they had minimal desires that needed met, and accordingly, spent less time trying to acquire things they did not need.

If they stopped, why do we keep going?

We may have some good excuses for our tendency to want more and more while they desired little. Their society required them to have few items and less baggage due to frequent relocation during the seasons, and they spent much time on foot – unnecessary items would have been a massive burden and could potentially interfere with their survival. Returning to the question of why we do not stop consuming, the answer it is significantly more complex than one would initially think, and is comprised of a combination of several issues. Some would even say that, at times, it feels as though we are pushed by an invisible hand to keep consuming, and this push is leading to some major issues that are rarely discussed when it comes to our physical and mental health. For instance, the replacement of nutrient-dense and satisfying foods with a push towards an overabundance of cheap, nutrient-sparse, processed, addictive, and insulin-skyrocketing frankenfoods may be ushering in massive misdirected consumption. Yet, when assessing health, I rarely consider the impact of consumerism, and from my observations, neither does most of the rest of the medical field.

I assumed if I was failing miserably in this realm of consumerism, the rest of the U.S. was failing alongside me. Combining this failure with that of the upswing of obesity (i.e. another failure for us in medicine), I decided to spend some time researching how the rest of the United States and world was dealing with the constant flirtatious nature of the seductress known as consumerism. How are we dealing with constantly being told (or suggested) that we need more and more?

Consumerism and Health: Our Spending Habits

According to the data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), below are our spending habits in 2017 compared to the rest of the world, along with our saving habits over the last four and a half decades:

At first glance the data reveal just how massive household spending is for families in the U.S. – with only half of its population, we are doubling spending in comparison to continental Europe. Hearing these numbers, it is not surprising to find that we have been saving considerably less as a percentage of our income – except for the interesting blip noted after the stock market crash in 2008, this value has declined significantly since the 1970’s.

In other words, we are spending more, saving less, and outspending entire continents. The next logical question: where is this money going?

Consumerism and Health – Where Our Money Goes:

What is cannibalizing our savings? The question, of course, is where is all this money going and what are we spending it on? Judging by the media and what we are often told by the popular press, most would guess that the enormous cost of food is cannibalizing our salaries. Below is a pie chart utilizing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You’ll notice that the bulk of our salary is spent on housing and associated costs, along with transportation and automobile costs. The massive chunk of our salary devoted to housing is less than surprising, as homes in the US have exploded in size from an average of 1,725 square feet in 1983 to 2,600 in 2003. One component of spending that is surprisingly small is food.

Just under 13% of our salary is spent on food, the basic necessity of life that dominated the work time of the Ju’/hoansi Bushmen. Just over half of that amount is spent on groceries and food for consumption at home, with just under half of our money spent on food obtained from eating out. According to the World Economic Forum, while we spend significantly more of our salary per month than the rest of the world, we spend the least amount of money on food of any country in the world.

Even worse, different sources reveal a varied story, several showing an even more dismal picture when it comes to money spent on food. For instance, according to the USDA, over a third of every food dollar is spent on eating out. This finding is concerning, as multiple studies have shown that food at home is significantly healthier than eating out (remember, nobody cares about our health as much as us, and the goal of restaurants is to make their food taste good and to maximize profit, which often comes at the expense of high-quality and healthy sources of food).¹ Furthermore, the push for palatability of restaurant food often leaves us consuming massive amounts of poor quality food in one sitting.² Other studies even question whether sit down restaurant food is any healthier than fast food, as both pale in comparison to food prepared and cooked at home.³

If we turn back the clock to 1901, the average US household was spending 42.5% of their income on food, 14% on clothing, and 23.3% on housing. Only 19% of families owned houses, while 81% were renters. By 1950, the same time McDonald’s and other similar “restaurants” entered the food scene, food spending dropped to a third of income. Fast-forwarding a century to 2002, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that the amount spent on food plummeted to 13%, a 70% drop overall. Americans were spending half of their paycheck on clothing and housing, and 20% on vehicles and transportation. Reading and education occupied only 2% of US family income.

While on one hand, we could consider the reduced money spent on food as a positive, when considering where that money is going, one has to take pause. Since 1960, we can see a sharp decline of income spent on food, and especially food at home:

When investigating the frequently heard comment about the ever-rising price of food, data reveal that this price is actually quite stable correlating to inflation, and in fact much more stable than the price of gas and heating our homes (it is costly to heat and cool our massively over-sized and over-leveraged homes).

While we are spending considerably less on food, we are buying considerably more food, leaving us with even larger concerns when it comes to our health. While these numbers must be taken with a grain of salt, the daily caloric intake of Americans in 1909, according to the USDA, was 3,400 kcal/day. This decreased to 3,300 in 1940, 3,200 in 1950, back to 3,300 in 1970, and then directed upwards, as it hit 3,500 in 1980, 3,800 in 1990, 4,200 in 2000, and 4,000 kcal/day in 2010.

What happened?

Many of us have theories, ranging from the promotion of insulin- and hunger-stimulating carbohydrates, to hyperpalatable foods causing over-consumption, to just general over-consumption. All may be right. However, when juxtaposing this aspect of consumerism to massive over-consumption in all other aspects of life, wouldn’t an increase in the amount of food be expected? More food is part of a consistent theme of bigger houses and more stuff. The thought of increasing everything around us, but for some reason decreasing the amount of food (or even keeping it steady) would be highly unlikely, if not impossible.

In other words, the focus away from food with our spending, much like our McMansion houses, has veered towards a goal of quantity instead of quality. We increased our amassment of all things, and this included food. We spend less on food to use this money elsewhere, yet are buying more food by volume. Something has got to give.

Consumerism and Health: From the Ju’/hoansi Bushmen to the Modern Culture of Consumerism

While Suzman’s work may provide us with a prescription to curb our consumerism and spending, psychologist Kima Cargill has produced a must-read book on how the current addiction to consumerism has ushered in the obesity crisis in The Psychology of Overeating. Cargill argues, rather successfully, that if we are programmed to consume as much as possible in one domain of our life, it is unreasonable to think this will not spill over into other, if not all, areas of our lives. Eventually, over-consuming goods leads to over-consuming food, and the over-consumption of both has been fueled by massive companies and their marketing firms for decades. Both will leave us less healthy and happy physically and mentally. In her words:

“What is missing from this framework is thinking about all types of consumption as a unified construct: culturally, economically, existentially, and biologically; that is, thinking about food and overeating not just as a dietary issue, but as one that resides in the context of the consumption of material goods, luxury experiences, alcohol and drug use, evolutionary behaviors, and all forms of acquisition.”

In other words, we have been turned into consumption machines, likely by the companies that profit most from this consumption. Sure, we have to share in this blame. However, these companies have used some dirty tactics to get us hooked, like targeting children,⁴ promoting overeating by providing a massive variety of out of season foods,⁵ and chemically manipulating the ingredients in foods to make them ultra-palatable and more rapidly absorbed to increase their addictiveness.⁶ And yes, this last change is the same that occurs in the production of street drugs to increase their addictiveness.⁷ We may shoulder part of the blame, but many of us are helpless when this highly addictive heroin is labeled as food and freely available on the shelf at our local grocery store – same drug high just through different mechanisms. Those of us repeatedly told to eat “everything in moderation” may also be receiving some bad advice as this strategy continues to expose us to doses of these addictive drugs, where small or large doesn’t matter as the end result is dependence.

Unfortunately, little of this consuming has to do with spending that would be beneficial to our health, and we seem to fall right into their trap. No, I am not typing this from my soapbox as I often fall hook line and sinker. We spend a tiny fraction of our salary on food to be cooked at home—i.e. real food like meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit – which provides an array of additional health benefits beyond food. The meditative process of cooking, time spent preparing a meal with family, socializing, etc. are lost when we turn to processed and fast food joints. Furthermore, when returning to the home, we more often spend a massive amount of our salary on the actual house, just not what we are eating in it. In other words, we may like big homes to heat and cool and spend even more money maintaining, but just don’t like to actually use that Sub-Zero fridge or Viking Range to cook.

In other words, we may like big homes to heat and cool and spend even more money maintaining, but just don’t like to actually use that Sub-Zero fridge or Viking Range to cook.

It has reached a point where consumerism seems as addictive as a drug – and it should as many of the foods that we spend our money on are engineered with the perfect amount of salt, sugar, and fat, to stoke our inner addictive flame, acting more like a drug than a source of nutrition and energy. The poor quality of these foods, as Cargill notes, parallels the rest of the consumer landscape:

 “Much like the global shopping landscape is littered with cheaply made clothing and furniture which encourage high-volume consumption, the food landscape is littered with low-quality packaged sweets and refined carbohydrates which also encourage high-volume consumption.”

Consumerism and Health are not Independent

In the land of addictive consumers surrounded by addictive foods whom are constantly told they should buy everything they want (as opposed to need) at the instant they want it (ahem, Amazon), are we surprised we have an obesity epidemic on our hands? Is Amazon not successful because it caters to this insatiable need?

As Zygmunt Bauman aptly stated in his masterpiece Work, Consumerism and the New Poor, “a ‘normal life’ is the life of consumers, preoccupied with making their choices among the panoply of publicly displayed opportunities for pleasurable sensations and lively experiences. A ‘happy life’ is defined by catching many opportunities and letting slip but few or none at all.”

We are consistently told to buy and consume by businesses and marketing strategists, and if you think the treadmill of consumerism does not penetrate into every aspect of our lives, including our diet and health habits, you are dead wrong. During my training, when I had little spare cash, one of my mentors would suggest to all of his trainees to habitually put a monthly amount of money into an Index 500. We were making little to no money and were up to our eyeballs in debt. Yet, the amount did not matter – he stressed that it was important for us to become accustomed to putting money away each month. If we could learn fiscally responsible behaviors when we were at our poorest, then these good habits would blossom once we actually made an income. We should view our health the same way. Or, according to Cargill, “caloric and financial reckoning are something we must all do to remain financially solvent and physically healthy – a kind of self-regulation governed by accounting principles that is in opposition to the powerful forces of consumer culture.”

Purchasing items is no different. We are now surrounded by Costco, Sam’s Club, and other warehouse shopping clubs where we can push our consumerism to the fullest. Most members think they are saving money with these bulk purchases, yet data reveal that shopping at these club stores leads to a 5% increase in spending on packaged food, a 15% increase in time spent shopping, and in increase in caloric consumption by 8%.⁸ Paying the membership fee for these clubs not only costs consumers even more money, but may have an effect that leaves them wanting to spend more to make up for the sunk cost. In other words, buying food in bulk to save money and time only leads to us eating more, spending more, and burning more time.

“Sugar that we consume in the form of sweets and highly processed foods is toxic to our bodies and the “sugar” we consume in the form of disposable clothing, luxury watches, and soon-to-be obsolete gadgets are toxic to our psyches when consumed in large enough quantities and without mitigating healthful behaviors.”

-Kima Cargill

In other words, we have been force-fed consumerism by our big businesses and their marketing firms, creating the downfall of our inhibitions. Our health, however, is shackled to this demise as well, getting pulled alongside it to the bottom of the consumerism abyss. It is present right in front of our eyes, but perhaps is too close and thus difficult to see. I have fallen prey to it many times, and even worse, I have failed my patients by not considering it when approaching some of the major societal impacts on their health.

Consumerism and Health: Work – the Fuel of Consumerism

Clearly our employment has to fuel this consumerism by supplying us with money to buy, buy, buy. Many of us have reached a point of indentured servitude when it comes to the workplace. Traditional indentured servants generally signed their life away for several years to work in exchange for shelter, food, and clothing. Modern indentured servitude adds an array of new factors to this list. As more and more of us find ourselves playing the “who can stay later” game at work, we end up clocking more time for big corporations, working late hours, and missing important family events, leaving us burned out with less free time, especially time where we actually have the energy to embrace and enjoy the moments called “life.” Oftentimes, we are simply trading hours of our lives for money, as we are unclear about what, if any, tangible and helpful product or service we are producing through these countless hours of work. These long hours pull us from other healthy activities, like walking, exercise, spending time with family, and cooking a meal of real food, and replace them with stress, prepackaged foods, and more consumerism in an attempt to fill the void.

Ironically, this pattern in the workforce was realized over a century ago, when Simon Nelson Patten, in The New Basis of Civilization, noted “Indebtedness could discipline workers, keeping them at routinized jobs in factories and offices, graying but in harness, meeting payments regularly.” Promoting the necessity for us to buy, consume, and accumulate debt works well for big businesses and our employers, as it was – and is – the perfect formula to a life of reliance on the workplace and the usurpation of our free time.

With less free time comes more consumption. According to a report by the USDA, the average American family now spends only 37 minutes a day preparing and cooking food and cleaning up.⁹ Many Americans have turned to fast food to save time, yet the data reveal that this amount of time is nearly insignificant over the year, especially when transportation is considered. Furthermore, eating out ends up costing us significantly more money, potentially negating our reasoning for working long hours in the first place.

 This push for pre-made convenience food is the product of this false notion that we have no time, and the success of convenience food is “because of prior conceptions about time,” and furthermore, “most such food would not succeed if Americans cared more about how and what they ate.”¹⁰

And why are we doing this? Oftentimes, it is to make more money to buy more stuff that we don’t need (see the pie chart above, many of us are rarely spending this extra cash on anything worthwhile for our health, true happiness, and wellbeing). Instead, we devour our paycheck as we attempt to keep up with the Jones’s, which more often than not, includes buying things not just to enjoy them, but for the reaction we receive from others. In The Overworked American, economist Juliet Schor referred to it as the “work-and-spend cycle.” She defines this vicious cycle as:

“The work-and-spend cycle is a phenomenon in which people in affluent nations remain trapped in a pattern of long hours of work and increasing consumption spending that fails to generate lasting improvements in well-being and plays a major role in ecological degradation.”¹¹

Until we can take an honest and earnest look at consumerism and contemplate how it affects our overall life and health, it seems like we will be able to do little to curb this ecological degradation and the falling rate of good health in this country and the world.

Consumerism and Health: In Comes Envy

Perhaps one of the unhealthiest consequences of the tightening grip of consumerism is the aftermath: the constant showing off of what we buy. Nowadays, this includes showing off our big houses, luxury trips, new cars, and other pointless items on social media with pictures and stories to illustrate to others, most commonly as a facade, how amazing our lives are. This display creates a sense of envy from those who cannot acquire these items or experiences, but can merely watch from a distance. This envy can then spiral into anxiety and depression,¹² and ultimately, more spending and more consumption.¹³ The vicious cycle repeats itself again and again, worsening each component along the way.

Naval Ravikant does an incredible job of discussing the toxicity that accompanies social media in his video on After Skool:

Returning to Suzman and the Ju’/hoansi Bushmen, these modern hunter gatherers may have engaged in what the West would view as a simple way of life, however, they deeply knew of the dangers of envy. In fact, while their society had few rules and regulations, one thing they consistently promoted was a sense of egalitarianism. They had few items out of necessity, there was no hierarchy within their society, and even the hunters knew how to curtail envy – after a big hunt, the hunter who scored the biggest kill would get ridiculed by the other hunters. Sure, they would often do it with a smile, but their fear of envy and its ability to derail their entire society was palpable, so much so that this fear persisted for thousands of years throughout their history.

While few of us would be willing to return our lifestyle to one resembling our hunter gatherer roots, or those of the Bushmen, we have a lot to learn from our most modern hunter gatherers and their views that strongly eschewed consumerism. Yet, if the Bushmen knew of the immense dangers of excessive consumption and envy, perhaps our nearly constant dialogue over what is making modern men and women so unhealthy and overweight should expand beyond simple and often incorrect medical explanations, and assess some serious, deep-rooted issues buried in our consumerist society.

Consumerism and Health: What are the Solutions?

What can we do to combat the constant barrage of advertising for food, cars, and other products that we supposedly need to be prosperous members of society? Well, a little personal responsibility could go a long way as a society to help improve our health. However, it would be wrong to ignore how often and how many of us are suckered into buying irrelevant and wasteful products by the massive companies that produce them and their teams of marketers’ manipulative advertising.¹⁴ Most of us fail miserably in sorting out the reasonable from the rubbish, even on a daily basis. Several daily habits that I have adopted have worked for me and may be worth a try. These include:

1. Avoiding using my cell phone for social media
2. Use social media for constructive activities only (social media acts as a conduit for consumption and item envy)
3. Block anyone posting or commenting with malicious or insulting comments as they act as fodder to pull us in, to consume more negative social media
4. Aiming to buy real food only at grocery stores and to get bulk of food from local farms and farmers markets
5. Avoiding/minimizing packaged foods
6. Consider the mental and financial cost of maintaining items before purchasing them
7. Be mindful about which items and activities truly provide self-worth and happiness and those which lead to a detrimental impact on our health and happiness

Furthermore, the books I have quoted throughout this article have helped me with my daily struggle and often dysfunctional relationship with consumerism. Acknowledging it was my first step (and awakening). The daily bombardment of advertisements and social media tempting us to consume more requires daily reflection – especially keeping in mind that these activities fly in the face of thousands of years of societal wisdom buried deep within the Bushman culture. Then, we can begin to view these items less as necessities, or even as useful, but instead as unnecessary seductresses advertised and paraded on social media. Furthermore, I have found it helpful to remember that the addictive cycle of consumerism can easily suck us in, only to spit us out more envious, anxious, depressed, overweight, unhealthy, and certainly, less happy. Repeat the cycle several times and disaster surely ensues – many of us don’t stand a chance. Much like addictive drugs and drug-like addictive foods, the only way to resist for those of us most at risk is to avoid by all means necessary.

For those of us that fail, we are left with expensive cars, big houses, unnecessary items that we have no need for, and the tail end finances needed to maintain these unnecessary items. The result?

Big waistlines, poor health, and empty savings accounts. Until we begin to seriously consider the effect of consumerism on our health, and strategies to avoid the seductive cycle of consumption, we will have a difficult time making any traction on improving the health of our society. The good news is we know the problem and can take steps to improve or avoid it. Like all diseases, successful treatment requires repairing the problem first, as opposed to simply treating the symptoms. Returning to Cargill, through her interactions with patients and the current food and consumerism landscape, she understands that the solution is more than a medical approach:

“At the individual level, treatment for overeating cannot simply be going on a diet or taking prescription medication, but must involve a rejection or rethinking of the food landscape and consumer culture.”

Good luck as you attempt to avoid consumerism and improve your health and happiness. It is not an easy journey, but well worth it.

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