Imagine yourself at lunch at your best friend’s home with good food on the table and a glass of your favourite wine in your hand. The fun conversations have made you lose sight of time and before you know it the desserts arrive. Your friend, mindful of people’s desire to eat healthy, brings a plate of fruits along with a Tres Leches cake, which she describes as, “Sponge cake soaked in condensed milk, and heavy cream, topped with whipped cream and a caramel sauce drizzle”. What are the chances you’d pick that fruit? If you were anything like me, that Tres Leches cake would be gone well before the host finishes explaining what Tres Leches is! Turns out most people can’t resist such temptations despite knowing it's bad for their waistline! But the same people, when given the option of pre-ordering fruits or dessert at a lunch date that’s one week out, typically make the sensible choice of the fruit. Researchers call this temporal discounting: the payoff of a future event that’s more beneficial is discounted and appears less attractive compared to an immediate payoff that’s less beneficial. This is made more acute when the item (like money, or even cake) with the immediate payoff is right in front of us, or practically in hand.
