Nassim Taleb on food preferences

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When people get rich, they lose control of their preferences, substituting constructed preferences to their own, triggering their own misery. And these are the preferences of those who want to sell them something (a skin-in-the-game problem as their choices are dictated by others who have something to gain, and no side effects, from the sale).


I've mentioned here the following anecdote. I once had dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant with a fellow who insisted on eating there instead of my selection of a casual Greek place. People in the restaurant were of the very constipated style, that kind of atmosphere. Dinner consisted in a succession of complicated small things. It felt like work. I left the place starving. Now if I had a choice I would have had some time-tested recipe (say a pizza with fresh ingredients, or a juicy hamburger) in a lively place --for a tenth of the price. But because the fellow could afford the expensive restaurant, we ended up the victims of some complicated experiments by a chef judged by some Michelin bureaucrat (one that would fail the Lindy effect, instead of eating some minute local variation around a progress through Sicilian grandmothers).
(Footnote: Hamburgers are tastier than filet mignon, because of the higher fat content, but people have been convinced that the latter is better because it is more expensive to produce).

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