What's your hurry? How fast food may fuel impatience

Want to be able to smell the roses? You might consider buying into a neighbourhood where there are more sit-down restaurants than fast-food outlets, suggests a new paper from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. The paper looks at how exposure to fast food can push us to be more impatient and that this can undermine our ability to smell the proverbial roses. One study surveyed a few hundred respondents throughout the US on their ability to savor a variety of realistic, enjoyable experiences such as discovering a beautiful waterfall on a hike. Based upon their zip codes, the researchers linked participants' responses to objective information from the most recent US Economic Census on the concentration of fast-food restaurants in their neighborhood relative to sit-down restaurants. The findings revealed that people living in communities with a higher prevalence of fast-food restaurants were significantly less able to enjoy pleasurable activities that require savoring, even when controlling for economic factors of the individual and the neighborhood. The study's authors propose that's because fast food can incite people to feel more impatient, diminishing their ability to slow down and savour life's simpler joys.