What Is The Motivational Triad & Its Association With Junk Food Consumption

WHAT IS MOTIVATIONAL TRIAD?

The primary objective of human and animal brains is to keep us alive. Due to evolution, our brain has mainly focused on three things in order to survive.

  • To avoid pain
  • To seek pleasure
  • Fulfilling the first two conditions by being efficient and proficient at energy conservation.

These three factors make up the term known as Motivational Triad.

THE JUNK FOOD CONNECTION

As we all know that in today’s day and age we consume Junk food more than ever. Processed food, as well as fast food, is the go-to source of nutrition.

People consume processed food snacks frequently like biscuits, candies, chips& crackers while in fast food burgers, pizza’s, deep fried chicken, french fries, etc

These foods have a low nutritional yet high caloric value.

And so are linked to diseases such as heart, disease, obesity, diabetes, and many other problems as are consumed in high quantity.

What could be the reason? None other than the motivational triad; our outdated survival instinct.

Studies have shown that when these types of foods are near us, in our sights, and within our reach, we have a higher propensity to consume them.

This is because it requires very little effort to get those foods and get our energy requirements from them.

Since due to the motivational triad we like to spend less energy on harder tasks we opt for an easy way out too.

Instead of preparing our own food, we can just go out and just go and buy large quantities of processed foods and eat them while lying down in front of the TV or using mobile phones.

The same concepts apply to exercise we constantly find excuses to avoid hardships and crave things such as fast food.

Despite their low nutrition value, junk foods are tastier and easily & cheaply available.

And once people get addicted to these foods, our motivational triad doesn’t allow us to get rid of these deleterious habits.

CONCLUSION

In order to move forward, we must hone our motivational triad & shouldn’t shy away from little discomforts, stepping out of our comfort zones, bearing hardships, at least once in a while on daily basis.

We should seek discomfort, seek growth and spend our energies on productive tasks.

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