What you see is what you eat...

Why your food environment matters more than willpower

Oh, my phone! I have such a divisive relationship with it. I need it as much as I hate it. It’s necessary but distractive. I try to be disciplined, but leave it on the sideboard and I find myself glancing, grabbing and scrolling without a single conscious thought. Full-on autopilot.

Why?

I’ve left a cue in plain sight: right there on the sideboard in the busiest part of the house, the one I walk past a dozen times a day.

It’s also weirdly attractive… who knows what little dopamine hit might be waiting behind my passcode? It’s easy too - there’s zero resistance stopping me from reacting.

It's also satisfying, taking me to a land far, far away from washing up or making packed lunches.

The point? I’ve created an environment where this behaviour just happens. I know i want to avoid it, but it's too hard to resist.

What if, instead, I tucked my phone in a drawer?

Most of us know the basics of healthy eating. We know that ultra-processed foods, sugar and refined carbs don't serve us well, and that vegetables, proteins and whole foods do. Yet we still grab the biscuits.

Why? Because the real challenge isn’t knowing what to eat, it’s a lack of resistance around the foods we shouldn't eat. We’re all busy, distracted and on our own daily missions, and the world around us rarely presents what we need. Instead it's stacked with whats's tasty, attractive and immediate, and we take the bait.

The biggest driver of what we eat is what we see.

The pull of the cue — the phone analogy in action

A few months ago, my dad visited. He brought his favourite custard tarts to share and didn’t give them a second thought all day. It got to around 10:30pm, we were all heading to bed, and as he walked through the kitchen he spotted one on the counter.

He grabbed it and said,

We’re such reactors. Our eyes lead our hands long before hunger does.

But what if the cue hadn’t been there?

If I’d made that custard tart invisible, perhaps tucked it in a tin, Dad wouldn’t have eaten it. This is how today’s food environment works: manufacturers and supermarkets engineer irresistible cues: colourful packaging, perfect placement and ready-to-grab. When the cue is there and the food is designed to delight, willpower rarely wins.

Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People, puts it bluntly:

It’s not you that’s broken. It’s the cues and convenience shaping your behaviour, and over time, our behaviours become habits, and these are hard to break.

What the research says

Behaviour-change research shows that our willpower fails when the environment is stacked against us. Think shiny chocolate bars in a grocery store, or the smell of baked pastries on the counter. Put simply, using James Clear's framework (author of Atomic Habits):

• When cues are obvious, we react 

• When they're attractive, they're hard to resist

• When they're easy there's nothing to stop us  

• When they're satisfying, they're repeatable

It's tough, but fighting back isn't impossible...

A better tool than willpower - setting ourselves up for success

If the environment beats willpower every time then we need to change it. We aren't about to re-shape supermarkets, but our homes are a good place to begin - our own food environments.

Using Clear's framework we need to

·       Make good food obvious - keeping it where we can see it.

·       Make it attractive - colourful bowls, jars, prepped snacks.

·       Make it easy - have nuts/seeds/yoghurt/berries/dark chocolate ready to grab.

·       Make them satisfying - enjoy what you've eaten!

We also need to engineer the reverse:

·       Hide the bad stuff, or better still, don't buy it - out of sight is out of mind.

·       Make it unattractive - put biscuits in faded Tupperware; create notes saying 'no'.

·       Make it hard - create barriers to the bad stuff. Where are the hard-to-reach places?

·       Make them un-satisfying - keep your food wrappers for a week and reflect!

There's a hierarchy to these actions too. Just controlling the cue - your environment - is a very big win!

Practical ways to start

Start with the shop

• Don’t shop hungry — hunger turns impulse buys into “essentials.”

• Use a list and stick to it; supermarkets are designed to make you wander.

• Shop online if impulse aisles seduce you.

• Stock up on clever staples: tinned chickpeas, lentils, beans, chopped tomatoes, frozen peas, edamame, leafy greens - your instant building blocks.

  
  

Design your cupboards like a display - think shop windows!

• Eye level = eat level, so put fruit, nuts, whole grains and healthy snacks where you can see them.

• Hide the treats - opaque tubs, high shelves & back of cupboards.

• Make healthy food look good — decant oats, put grains and pulses into jars - perhaps even on display and keep a colourful fruit bowl.

• Create assembly lines for your staples - making it easy!

  
  

Upgrade breakfast

• Don't buy the traps of sugary cereals, croissants & white bread. If they’re not there, you can’t eat them.

• Keep smart staples: Greek or kefir yoghurt, frozen berries, nuts, seeds, flax, chia, tahini.

• Rotate combos: yoghurt + berries + seeds; oats with tahini and fruit; toast with nut butter and flax - have some fun with it!

• Eggs are your friend!

  
  

Make lunch frictionless

• Double dinner so leftovers become grab-and-go lunches. Portion ahead of serving so you don’t just eat extra at night.

• Invest in nice containers — lunch that looks appealing gets eaten.

• Keep quick building blocks: frozen veg, ready-to-eat pulses, tinned fish or beans.

  
  

Create healthy defaults & add friction for treats

• Put fruit, veg sticks, sparkling water where you’ll see them first.

• If chocolate is a non-negotiable, swap milk for dark chocolate. Pair with almonds to fill you up!

• Wrap or freeze biscuits/chocolate so you pause before grabbing.

• Shrink indulgences — small packs hidden away beat open jars on the counter.

Why this works

This isn’t about becoming a willpower superhero. It’s about removing constant temptation so you don’t fight ten tiny battles every day because it's exhausting.

Every small shift from moving snacks, stocking smarter and pre-making lunch is one less decision and one less moment of exhausting self-control. Over time, these quiet wins reshape habits far more effectively than discipline.

Reclaim your food world

We’re not weak. We’re wired to react, and marketers know it, preying on our vulnerabilities and fattening profit margins. But the environments closest to us: our homes, desks and lunchboxes are ours to reclaim. Be empowered by this.

• Out of sight really is out of mind.

• Small tweaks add up.

• Your future self will thank your present self.

  
  

Next time you walk into your kitchen or open your lunchbox, ask yourself:

What am I making easy here? Is it food that fuels me, or food that fails me? A conscious thought leads to a conscious action. Switch your environment around and the wins really do add up.

Change what you see, and you change what you eat - sounds simple, but if you need help reengineering your food environment, you know where I am!

Sarah x