Why is more better than one?

The other day I was having a discussion with a client. He was relaying the story of his visit to friend’s house and how the friend pulled out a huge tub of cookies and exclaimed his guests “just had to try one!”. The guests (my client) ate one and it was unbelievably good. So…after the guests had eaten their cookie, the host packed up the box and put the rest away. No more cookies -- just one. The guests were stunned.

In talking with the client about this, the question came up “would you have eaten the one cookie differently if you knew it was going to be the only one you got?”. The answer was a resounding yes!

We have gotten used to many -- not just one. It didn’t even enter into my client’s head that there would be just one offered. If it had, he would have eaten the cookie slowly, savoring the texture and the taste of butter.

Why is more better than one? Honestly, I do not believe it is. More is just what we are used to. More just means that we have more opportunities to taste what we are eating without having to pay close attention while we are doing it. But we eat more calories and gain weight. In the case of the cookies, we amp up our blood sugar and put additional strain on our pancreas as it tries to secrete enough insulin to bring our blood sugar back in line. The downsides are there because of our lack of attention. Honestly, we do not care enough about what we are doing to bring our full attention to it. That one cookie does not merit our full attention because there is a whole tub of them and we can always have more.

Sound familiar??