Campbell’s Law and milkshakes.
Campbell’s Law is an adage developed by Donald T. Campbell, a psychologist and social scientist, who stated:
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Campbell gave an example of the above by stating that achievement tests at school may be valuable indicators of school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. However, when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as an educational status and can distort the educational process. Perverse incentives, which are unintended and undesirable incentives, begin to creep in and distort data for what the initial measure was put in place for.
I want you to see that calories as a goal set by big food corporations aimed at us to be reached. And for many when calories become the only goal for weight loss then other factors like food quality and nutritional content fall to the wayside. One may lose weight but at the cost of what? Was the focus on calories invented to distract us from the reducing quality of food?
Writing this section, I came across a study that you may find interesting. In this study, researchers gave participants identical milkshakes with different labels. The first was labelled as a high-fat, high-calorie, dessert shake made with vanilla ice cream. The second was labelled non-fat, zero-sugar, low-calorie yoghurts dessert substitute. And the participants were told that the goal of the study was to evaluate whether the milkshakes tasted similar and to examine the body’s reaction to the different nutrients.
Both groups had no difference in their subjective feelings of fullness, but their ghrelin levels of those drinking the high calorie labelled milkshake spiked then crashed, whilst the “low calorie” group’s ghrelin levels remained flat. They were both drinking the exact same thing!
What does this mean? The observed pattern of ghrelin response was consistent with what one might have observed if participants actually consumed beverages with differing caloric contents. But this study showed that what the mind thought and believed psychologically mediated their hormonal response.
Why does this matter? Well imagine you go to the supermarket and pick up a yoghurt labelled ‘low fat’ or ‘low calorie’, the yoghurt may be full of sugars and actually still be high in fat (but just lower in fat than other options), but the label tricks the mind and thus the body isn’t adequately prepared with raised ghrelin levels. As the study notes, “This juxtaposition of unhealthy nutrients with healthy proclamations may be especially dangerous. Not only is the product itself unhealthy, but the mindset of sensibility might correspond to an inadequate suppression of ghrelin, regardless of the actual nutrient makeup”. An ill-prepared body influences food absorption and other hormones down the line.
And secondly, a juxtaposition between the actual objective satiating effect of food and the belief of food satisfaction may cause ghrelin dysregulation which can cause hunger, as ghrelin is increased when hungry or during starvation, and thus those who are ‘dieting’ may remain in a perpetual state of hunger no matter what they’ve eaten.
Be wary of how food is packaged and marketed. Be wary of simplifying food down to numbers. All of this plays a part in metabolism well before anything enters your mouth.
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