Imagine a world with two types of people, each of which make up around 50% of the population:
- Fuelers get neither pleasure nor displeasure from eating and see food solely as fuel for their bodies. To a Fueler, eating is like brushing teeth. Their diets are based solely on things like nutrition, cost and animal welfare.
- Tasters are just like we are now.
Compared to Tasters, Fuelers on average are:
- Healthier. Fuelers are less likely to be overweight and have lower rates of heart disease. Eating disorders are also less common among Fuelers.
- Wealthier. Since Fuelers don’t go to fancy restaurants and can easily eat the same thing day after day, they save a lot of time and money on food.
- More likely to be vegetarian or vegan. The Fuelers who care about animal welfare find it far easier to resist eating meat for animal welfare reasons.
The reported wellbeing of Tasters and Fuelers is about the same. Even though Fuelers don’t get any pleasure from food, they don’t know what they’re missing and find fulfilment in other ways. Their higher levels of health and wealth may even lead to increased wellbeing. 1In real life, people who lose their sense of taste apparently have an increased risk of depression. However, I don’t think this will apply to Fuelers because:
(1) Losing a sense is different from never having it in the first place because you will know what you are missing.
(2) Since the vast majority of people enjoy food, many social gatherings in our world centre around food, so losing your sense of taste is likely to come with other challenges like social isolation. By contrast, Fuelers make up half the population in my thought experiment.
(3) Taste disorders can precede or accompany other serious health issues like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
What would you do?
Now, imagine there’s a safe, non-reversible procedure that allow Fuelers to become Tasters and vice versa.
In your current state as a Taster, would you choose to become a Fueler?
If you were born a Fueler, would you choose to become a Taster?
Personally, I don’t think I’d opt for the procedure either way.
I love food. I get tons of enjoyment from food and the positives definitely outweigh the negatives for me. As a Taster, I certainly wouldn’t want to give all that up. But if I were born a Fueler, I’d be pretty reluctant to do something that risked worsening my health and wealth outcomes and make it harder not to eat animals. I wouldn’t want to risk messing up my life just to experience a pleasure I have never even known.
The fact that I wouldn’t choose the procedure either way shows a strong preference for the status quo. I don’t think it’s a status quo bias because it’s just an extension of my general risk aversion, and I think some degree of risk aversion is rational.
Implications
This experiment highlighted for me how my preferences are unstable. (Economic models usually assume rational actors with stable preferences. It’s a somewhat jargony economics term which I’ve known for a long time but found harder to fully internalise.)
There’s a parallel between my thought experiment and the risks of technological progress. Occasionally, I hear techno-optimists point to all the technological innovations we currently have (and don’t want to give up) to support their position that technology is a net good. But being reluctant to give up things we currently enjoy (like taste) doesn’t mean we’d necessarily choose those benefits if we didn’t already have them—particularly when those benefits come with risks.
Of course, your preferences your answers to the two questions may well differ from mine. You could be more consistent and choose to be a Taster or a Fueler regardless of your starting point. The point of this post isn’t to argue that my position is correct but to prompt you to think about how heavily your preferences depend on your starting points.
I suspect people’s answers will be driven by a combination of their risk appetites (no pun intended) and current feelings towards food. But there’s no reason to limit this to food—you could substitute in anything that comes with both significant benefits and heavy costs, such as:
- a deep appreciation for art or music;
- burning ambition;
- emotional sensitivity; and
- perhaps even intelligence.
How would you choose in the thought experiment? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
- 1In real life, people who lose their sense of taste apparently have an increased risk of depression. However, I don’t think this will apply to Fuelers because:
(1) Losing a sense is different from never having it in the first place because you will know what you are missing.
(2) Since the vast majority of people enjoy food, many social gatherings in our world centre around food, so losing your sense of taste is likely to come with other challenges like social isolation. By contrast, Fuelers make up half the population in my thought experiment.
(3) Taste disorders can precede or accompany other serious health issues like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
6 thoughts on “Thought Experiment: Would You Give Up the Ability to Enjoy Food?”
When I first thought about this I thought my preferences were unstable in the opposite way.
I think if I was a fueler, I would definitely want to be a taster. I think that’s because I would just be optimistic (perhaps irrationally) about my ability to enjoy the taste of non-animal food, and have enough self-control to not overindulge.
But as an existing taster, and someone who does eat animals but strongly suspects I should not, I find the idea of being a fueler somewhat appealing…
But I think actually, if someone is offering me another sense (that isn’t just a new kind of pain or something lol), then I think I would just always take it. And taking it back to the other point in your post, I am generally optimistic about technological change.
That’s really interesting. I suppose if you were a Fueler you could just bargain with yourself and say you will never eat animal products and just settle for the increased utility from being able to enjoy non-meat products. But assuming meat/animal food products are as prominent in the Tasters’ world as they are in ours, I personally wouldn’t trust myself not to overindulge.
If someone offered me another sense, I definitely wouldn’t always take it – I’d be pretty hesitant and it would really depend on what we knew about it. For example, though they aren’t exactly “senses”, I wouldn’t take up hyperphantasia (extremely vivid mental imagery) or synesthesia (experiencing colours or images with music, taste or scents).
I think people often have very different appetites for risk and novelty, which end up influencing our views on a wide range of issues. I tend to be risk-averse but I think I’m above-average on novelty-seeking (the two come into conflict occasionally).
I’ve sometimes asked people an alternative of this: a pill that you can take that means you never need to eat- or enjoy food- again. People in wealthy countries might look at this with horror, but it makes me a bit guilty to think how many people around the world living without food security would snap it right up.
I think it’s simplistic to imply that we are all tasters. I think there is already a taster-fueler spectrum we live on, and I’m closer to the latter end than most, for the reasons you propose. Food is often a means to an end for me. I think I have a healthy balance between the two extremes.
I suppose I’m risk-averse and happy with this status quo too. I’m having a hard time trying to decide which side of the spectrum I’d rather move towards, which I suppose proves your point!
Giving up intelligence (to the extent which I have it, ha) is an interesting alternative. To be unintelligent sometimes seems appealing, perhaps with a more simple life with more simple and easily-obtainable pleasures, oblivious to worries about geopolitics, technological change, future pandemics etc. But then presumably you just have different worries and problems instead
I sometimes wonder about a pill/ operation/ device that means you no longer need to sleep. So you gain about 8 hours per day, so you’re effectively adding 50% to your life span. Seems a no-brainer! But the typical structure of your life is totally upended and your existence is just one continuous stream of consciousness until the day you die. Which does not feel right at all…
Good point about people already existing on a Taster-Fueler spectrum. I think I’m more on the Taster end, though I don’t have a particularly strong sweet tooth and I definitely wouldn’t want to get more enjoyment from sweet foods than I currently do. But I wouldn’t mind nudging more towards the Fueler end incrementally, if that were an option.
I’ve wondered about the pill to replace sleep, too. If it were widely available, I think at least some people would use some of the extra time to work harder and earn more money. To the extent we are trapped in some areas of zero-sum competition (e.g. for land/housing), this would create pressure on others to use their extra hours to work too, so we wouldn’t necessarily be that much “better off”. Kind of like how in the post WWII era, it was relatively common for middle-income households to just have one income earner but now it’s somewhat of a luxury. But perhaps a topic for another post.
This reminds me of a Ted Chiang short story, called “liking what you see” where the proposition is whether or not to take the “calliagnosia” procedure, which eliminates any appreciation for attractiveness in faces. Similar better health and self esteem, and less “lookism” prejudice. As with all his stories, he goes to town on offering every possible view (in a faux documentary format). In the end they develop a way to switch it on and off, which is definitely what I would want regarding your food thought experiment.
I actually think I’d be a fueler, I struggle with food and don’t enjoy struggling with it really, high calorie food brings me great pleasure but in the same way heroin would (I imagine). Meeting physical goals would be well worth the sacrifice for me.
I think I’d totally take the calliagonosia procedure. I don’t think I derive that much enjoyment from looking at attractive people anyway but, like most people, I do think I have some lookism prejudice. Sounds like an interesting short story, I’ll check it out.
Having the ability to switch food enjoyment on and off would make me more likely to take the procedure (as a current taster). But I think I’d just spend most of the time in “on” mode anyway since I rarely eat foods I hate anyway. Switching off enjoyment to eat just healthy, plant-based foods seems to require the same amount of self control as simply buy unhealthy foods in the first place – because the reason I eat unhealthy foods is not because I hate healthy foods (in most cases) but that I find the unhealthy foods too tempting.