The hidden forces shaping your choices

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're gonna find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, Hidden Forces. My grandma Toots was a big meat eater. She was a classic 1950s style housewife in The US and grew up in a time when meat was everywhere. Eighty or so years ago, when Sara Lake's grandma was running her household and feeding her family, meat was served at pretty much every meal. You would have breakfast with maybe perhaps sausage offered. You'd have lunch where it would be deli meat sandwiches, and you'd have dinner that would center over a large cut of meat. And so my grandma was a product of her time. Time now to tell you ladies how to keep father happy. Sarah says it wasn't like Grandma Toots was a meat obsessed carnivore. Real man type steak sandwich. In mid century America, there was a strategy to make meat the norm, starting after the Second World War. As savory beef stew when it's armor. It was impossible to avoid, and it was advertised heavily and pushed on consumers. Or Mel bacon stays fresh longer when Saran ran. This is when they first started creating national ad campaigns. And when you see these ads that meat is essential for your amino acids, it's essential for a well balanced diet. Found that man must have food which furnishes energy, food to build muscle and other And this is where we started getting this idea that meat was normal to eat every day in multiple meals when in reality, even ten years prior to that, it was an exception to have meat at a meal rather than the norm. But three factors completely flipped what was for dinner. First, the US government increased its meat subsidies. Second, new technology led to larger farms that could raise and slaughter more animals faster. Plus, people could refrigerate and store more meat. Finally, the national school lunch program launched Lunches are designed to be nutritious. With a mandate to serve protein. Meats and other foods rich in protein. We saw the fastest and largest shift in our diets that has ever really happened. Milk. I mean, I guess that's when it became, like, the American thing to do. You have meat and potatoes at dinner. You grill a hamburger in the summertime. Half an hour. For me, I just remember when I was growing up Beef. It's what's for dinner. The ad that, like, …