Influencing food choices

You want to make healthy choices when you shop but in supermarkets and even smaller retailers there are bright lights and promises of peak palate experiences wooing you away from your healthy intentions towards empty calories and ill health. It is widely advised that you should not shop when hungry because you are likely to purchase more food than you need and possibly the sorts of food that you really don’t want. Now however, a new study has taken that shopping wisdom further by discovering that if you eat certain types of food just before you shop then you are likely to make better food decisions while you are actually shopping.

In the first experiment of this new study people were either given a sample of apple to eat, a sweet biscuit, or nothing before they went on their shopping trip. When the researchers then tracked the subjects’ purchases they found that people given the apple purchased 28 per cent more fruit and vegetables than those given the biscuit and 25 per cent more fruit and vegetables than those given nothing.

In the next two experiments the participants shopped “virtually” on the computer. In the second experiment subjects were given a real apple or biscuit sample to eat and then asked to imagine that they were grocery shopping. They were then shown 20 product pairs and asked to select which one they would purchase. Each pair was comprised of one healthy item and one unhealthy item. Again, those given the apple sample were more likely to choose the healthy item than those given the biscuit.

The third experiment was very revealing.

In the third experiment subjects were divided into three groups. Prior to the virtual shopping test one group was given a chocolate milk labelled “healthy, wholesome chocolate milk”, another group was given exactly the same milk but this time labelled as “rich, indulgent chocolate milk”, and the third group received no milk. Again the participants made food selections in a virtual Grocery store with a variety of options. The subjects who were given the milk labelled as healthy made more healthy selections.

This last experiment tells us that it is not whether a food is actually healthy or not that influences our subsequent food choices but whether we think it is healthy. So if you want to make healthier food decisions then eat healthier food before you go shopping.

It makes poetic sense really because this is telling us that as a consumer what you consume prior to consuming influences what you consume…which isn’t too hard to swallow.