People may fantasize about living a leisurely, slow-food life, but in today's go-go world, what consumers really want are superfoods, says UC Davis American studies scholar Carolyn de la Peña.

That attitude is changing how we eat, she believes.

"People are going for the new short-cut foods," she says. "And when we choose among those foods, we often evaluate them using mathematical equations rather than through taste, smell and pleasure."

Consumers have learned to examine food labels to count the quantities of proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates, salt, caffeine and calories.

In the search for technologically superior foods, shoppers are drawn increasingly to manufactured "super foods" such as high-caffeinated drinks and power bars that concentrate particular ingredients.

New hyper-caffeinated drinks such as Red Bull are popular because they give a quick boost of energy. But the high-tech packaging and promotion are also part of the seduction. Red Bull's blue and silver spacecraft-like design, for instance, brands the drink as being a technologically superior product. As a result, consumers who buy it may also buy the illusion that they, too, are technologically superior, de la Peña says.

"The brand is marketed as 'techno-energy,' and these drinks promote the virile image of energy," de la Peña says.

Author of "The Body Electric" (2003), de la Peña connects today's cultural attitudes toward food with her investigations into the early 20th century belief that technology could renew energy in the human body.

"These superfoods tap into how excited people feel to be in the modern technological age," she says. "Eating these superfoods is seen as a productive, modern act."