6 . The term “oniomania”, which is used to describe people with obsessive (强迫性的), problematic shopping and spending behaviors, consists of the Greek words “onios”, meaning “for sale”, and “mania”. Also known as Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD) and Impulsive Compulsive Buying Disorder (ICBD), oniomania can leave negative impact on your financial health and mental wellbeing if left untreated.

At this point you might be wondering: “What’s the difference between an oniomaniac and someone who likes to shop perhaps a bit too much?” We tend to believe that the two are rather similar. Clinically (从临床上看), however, they are quite easy to separate.

Although people who like shopping will return an item if they do not like it and start budgeting if they run low on money, people suffering from oniomania are no longer able to make reasonable, let alone financially responsible, decisions. They sometimes emotionally dissociate from what they are doing, making their purchases while they are not really sure what to buy. Spending relieves feelings of anxiety and depression, but only temporarily. In a short time, they might become moody, annoyed, and depressed, and their confidence declines sharply.

To a certain extent, spending makes everyone feel good. In 2007, a group of researchers from MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon looked at the brains of American consumers via MRI technology and found that when they purchased desirable objects, their nucleus accumbens — the brain’s pleasure center — would light up, indicating a positive stimulation. This stimulation can take on different forms. For instance, some people get particularly excited when they believe they have gotten a good deal. This, researchers say, is the result of the prefrontal cortex — the decision-making part of our brain — interacting with the insula, the part of our brain that processes pain. According to psychotherapist Joyce Marter, compulsive buyers in the U. S. make an average of 156 impulsive purchases per year. Each purchase sets them back around $81. 75, making for a grand total of $5, 400 per year and a thorough shocking $324, 000 per lifetime. That money could have been invested in a home, an education, or other products that you actually need in order to survive and thrive in the world. Ultimately, though, treating oniomania is about much more than just protecting your finances from your own impulses — it’s also about maintaining your personal mental health and improving your relationships with others.

9 . Between 30 and 40 percent of food produced for humans never gets eaten in the USA, ending up in landfills (垃圾填埋场), where it breaks down and produces greenhouse gases. Now, Elena Belavina, a professor from Cornell University, has an interesting solution. He says that opening more grocery (食品杂货) stores could reduce (减少) food waste greatly.

People of most US cities don’t have enough choices when it comes to grocery shopping, which means that people will overbuy when visiting a store. They buy more than what they can really eat, which means food goes to waste. However, when there are more stores in a neighborhood, people will shop daily or many times a week, buying just what they need, which means less food goes to waste.

For example, Belavina found that in Chicago, adding just three or four markets within a 10-square-kilometer area reduced food waste by 6 percent to 9 percent. Europe (and much of the rest of the world) is famously good at this, with stores meeting shoppers’ different needs, such as bread, cheese, meat and produce.

Belavina’s research did find that increasing the number of grocery stores would lead to more food waste by sellers, but this is less than food waste produced by customers. “We at home throw away 10 times more food than the grocery stores,” she said. This is why focusing on solutions to reducing life rubbish will have a greater help than focusing on sellers. Belavina suggests that when adding more stores isn’t workable, people should explore other shopping methods such as online orders. “Any service that makes it easier and allows you to shop more often is helpful. To reduce food waste, what people need to do is bring fewer groceries home.”