If you had chocolates like this in front of you, how would you eat them?
BF would eat the whole box so he wouldn’t have to think about them.
I’d eat some and save some for later to “enjoy”.
Would you eat all your favourites first, and then pick at the rest?
Or save your favourite chocolates until the end, so you can savour them?
How about in a meal?
Do you eat off your plate what you don’t like first, or last?
Apparently, the way you eat your food, can have insights into your character, in terms of whether or not you are a saver or a spender.
People who tend to eat the worst chocolates first (wait, can there really be any “bad” chocolate? :P), are those who have high self-control and delaying tactics.
They’d rather go through the not-so-good stuff, to get to the golden riches at the end.
And vice versa.
Those who eat all the good pieces first, gratifying themselves, are left to pick through the undesirable chocolates at the end.
It may also stem from your wiring from childhood, whether you can delay gratification with self-control, or not.
BF is a hardcore saver, but he’d eat the whole box, lock stock and barrel.
Check this (cute) Marshmallow Test:
The New Yorker: The Secret of Self Control is an article all about these Marshmallow Experiments and how they turned out later in life.
[…] Carolyn [….] strongly suspects that she was able to delay gratification.
“I’ve always been really good at waiting,” Carolyn told me. “If you give me a challenge or a task, then I’m going to find a way to do it, even if it means not eating my favorite food.”
But her brother Craig, who also took part in the experiment, displayed less fortitude.
Craig, a year older than Carolyn, still remembers the torment of trying to wait. “At a certain point, it must have occurred to me that I was all by myself,” he recalls. “And so I just started taking all the candy.”
It’s the same thinking process as with saving or getting out of debt
You have to visualize the end goal, and frame it in such a way that it becomes easier to resist temptation.
For example, you can think about having a fully paid off house, a secure retirement where you don’t have to ask anyone (including your children) for money, or keep your job because of the money.
Or maybe, if you are saving money for a specific reason, you can envision yourself in Paris, sipping espresso at one of the cafes, with a scarf tied around your neck.
When [researcher Mischel] and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. T
The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes.
You just need to find your trigger, that will ignite something inside of you to be a solid resolve.
..and by the way, intelligence has nothing to do with self-control…
She found that the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q.
She said that her study shows that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”
This, I already knew. I am not the smartest cookie on the block.
I’ve just learned not to eat all the cookies at once 🙂
For me, I’m someone who can delay the best for last
It’s something I’ve always done since childhood, picked up from my older brother.
We would both eat all our vegetables and all the not-so-tasty stuff, only to savour the pieces of the best stuff at the end.
The only time where I break this rule, was if I am eating with a group of people, where everyone is picking at the good stuff that is shared by all.
Then, I go for the gold.
But generally speaking, I like saving the best parts of my meal, or the best chocolates in the box for last.
So perhaps, this behaviour picked up from my sibling when I was younger, is part of the reason why I felt (and still feel) a strong need for self-control when it comes to spending.
On the one hand, I didn’t turn on this frugal switch in the past, but on the other hand, I also didn’t get into massive, crippling credit card debt because of it.
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Although the conclusions reached are intuitive I’m not sure I agree. I used to be one of those people who “saved the best for last” when it came to food, but I eventually realized it was dumb. The reason is if I eat all the bad ones first I’m too full to enjoy the good ones. So I just eat my favorite part first (or until I’ve had enough) and just won’t eat what I don’t like. This has helped me not only lose weight but remain slim 😉 Oh, and I am a saver too …
I take all the dark chocolates and give the rest away as I don’t like milk or white or anything with caramel. In life I find myself giving people stuff I don’t have a need for, it’s because of my parents who just keep and keep and they have lots of junk now that they don’t have the energy to go through so they just sit there taking up space. I rather not be like them, so things I don’t want, other people can have.
You’re a real chocolate lover then 🙂 I like the milk and white…
I usually just eat the best ones.. then throw the rest out since the only time I ever have boxes of chocolate is during Christmas time, and given as gifts.
So where do I fall in this category?
*LAUGH* I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that you throw the worst out may be
a) You only pick the best anyway, and you’re willing to pay extra for the best even if it comes with the worst
b) You’re wasteful? 🙂
You’d have to ask the researchers.
Eat the worst first and best last period. Unless out with people eating the gold, then I dig in.
I taste everything in the box, and then decide which one I want to eat…I wrote a follow up to your post on The Debt Darling. 🙂 I really enjoyed this post, especially the marshmellow video…I can see myself banging my head against the table trying not to eat the marshmellow. LOL
This is probably revealing way too much about me, but oh well! I like to keep everything proportioned. If I have two pieces of chicken, I eat half the side items with each piece. In a casserole, I push all the pieces of meat around the edge of my plate, then allocate the noodles/veggies/whatever to each piece. I try not to do this in public but I’m kind of obsessive about it.
With the chocolates, I would eat a favorite first, then however many gross pieces it takes so that I end with a favorite kind. Okay, I just realized how crazy that sounds. OCD much? 🙂
It’s not nearly as OCD as you might think. … Or if it is, I’m similarly “afflicted.” 😛 I try a bit of everything on the plate. I decide which thing I like the best, and then I save a bit of that for the end of the meal.
I don’t know what that says about my saving habits, since it doesn’t quite fit with the habits described above, but it’s interesting to ponder.
If I’m getting the chocolate myself, I’m only going to buy a box of all chocolates I like. If I’m given a box, then I’ll eat a couple of the worst first and one favorite, so that’ll leave more favorites for the end. I know all about perseverance because it was so easy to save and pay for a car in full because it was so much less money, but for a house, I’m struggling with the delayed gratification because the amount I have to save is so much higher, but I’ll make it!
I like to mix them up.
I generally like to be the last to take a turn at something though if a few people are all doing the same thing, but we can only go one at a time.
I eat the good one first because I know Mrs. RB40 is eyeing them. 😉
I would avoid buying nasty chocolate in the first place too. heh heh..
I eat the “bad” ones first and then move on to the yummy flavours if that whole box of chocolates was mines.
I eat the bad ones first and then save the good ones for last. I’m with you on thinking that there can’t possibly be any bad chocolate though! Just good chocolate and better chocolate 😀
love this post! When it comes to food, I ALWAYS eat the not-so-great stuff first. I would say that overall, though, I have a harder time delaying gratification.
@a9d65e0079606cb4ef2c18df1b3d81ab:disqus – I do the same thing with Lucky Charms! 🙂
I always save the best for last in my food. On the rare occasion I eat Lucky Charms, I eat all the cereal parts first and save the marshmallows for last. However, my instant gratification needs in life, like shoes and a cute dress, are often hard to overcome.
I’m like your BF, superstar saver but those chocolates would be gone in three days, tops, and that’s if it were an enormous box. However, it would be very rare for me to buy chocolates for myself in the first place. Huge disconnect between food and money for me.
3 days!? try 3 minutes. He scarfs them down.
Uh oh…I am kind of like him….
I’m definitely an instant gratification gal.
BF is someone who eats everything at once. All of his favourites…. but he
is a HARDCORE saver, so he might be one of those exceptions
With food I eat everything at the same rate. To the point where my girlfriend mocks me when I have one bite of everything on my plate and one sip of my drink remaining. And I rarely notice until she points it out – it’s completely subconscious.
I do the same with the chocolates – intersperse the best ones with the not-as-good ones to give me maximum enjoyment. Eating all the best ones in a row dilutes the awesomeness.
It depends. If it is mine and only mine, I eat the ones I like slowly, saving the mint-chocolates or chocolate caramels for last, without fear of not getting any, and pick out the ones I don’t like for others to have 😛
If it is being shared, I swoop in and collect the ones I want to eat, and then eat them as I please. If I’m eating dinner, I cut everything up, and then eat pieces of everything, though I save a piece of the best for last.
I’m also a delayed gratification person! When I eat a hamburger, or a sandwich of any kind, I’ll eat the crust all the way around the edges, and save the center for last. 😉
I don’t know. I can totally see how this would be indicative of your overall habits, but I think sometimes food is just food, and small habits are just small habits. Or maybe it’s more indicative of future behaviour when studied in children, but not adults. I’m a great saver, but I would totally eat those favourite chocolates first and not even think twice about it.
But then I also always eat my french fries first when I’m out to dinner, not because they’re my favourite, but just because they don’t keep well, and if I’m going to take home leftovers, I don’t want it to be the french fries. So what does that tell you? Probably nothing. 🙂
True. But if you watch the marshmallow test and hear the results 20 years
later, there’s something to this!
Oh I definitely save the best for last when it comes to food! Since I was little I’ve always eaten my veggies and not-so-yummy stuff before going on to the best parts of the meal. I can’t imagine eating my plate of food any other way. And the same goes for a box of chocolates. I’m very good at “rationing” out food like that – I’d much rather have a chocolate or two at a time than eat everything at once and feel sick.
EXACTLY!
I also eat the best parts of a fruit salad, last. Like the pineapples and strawberries.. the rest, go first.