Incidental exposure to hedonic and healthy food features affects food preferences one day later

Léo Dutriaux,Lawrence W Barsalou,Jennifer Fallon,Leonel Garcia-Marques,Esther K Papies

doi:10.1186/s41235-021-00338-6

Abstract

Memories acquired incidentally from exposure to food information in the environment may often become active to later affect food preferences. Because conscious use of these memories is not requested or required, these incidental learning effects constitute a form of indirect memory. In an experiment using a novel food preference paradigm (n = 617), we found that brief incidental exposure to hedonic versus healthy food features indirectly affected food preferences a day later, explaining approximately 10% of the variance in preferences for tasty versus healthy foods. It follows that brief incidental exposure to food information can affect food preferences indirectly for at least a day. When hedonic and health exposure were each compared to a no-exposure baseline, a general effect of hedonic exposure emerged across individuals, whereas health exposure only affected food preferences for high-BMI individuals. This pattern suggests that focusing attention on hedonic food features engages common affective processes across the general population, whereas focusing attention on healthy food features engages eating restraint goals associated with high BMI. Additionally, incidental exposure to food features primarily changed preferences for infrequently consumed foods, having less impact on habitually consumed foods. These findings offer insight into how hedonic information in the obesogenic food environment contributes to unhealthy eating behavior that leads to overweight and obesity. These findings further motivate the development of interventions that counteract the effects of exposure to hedonic food information and that broaden the effects of exposure to healthy food information.

Highlights

Memories acquired incidentally from exposure to food information in the environment may often become active to later affect food preferences
We demonstrate that incidentally acquired memories of hedonic and healthy food features influence eating preferences
We further demonstrated how individual differences can be integrated into this paradigm (BMI, healthy eating habits), along with differences in foods

Summary

Introduction

Memories acquired incidentally from exposure to food information in the environment may often become active to later affect food preferences. When hedonic and health exposure were each compared to a no-exposure baseline, a general effect of hedonic exposure emerged across individuals, whereas health exposure only affected food preferences for high-BMI individu‐ als. Incidental exposure to food features primarily changed preferences for infre‐ quently consumed foods, having less impact on habitually consumed foods These findings offer insight into how hedonic information in the obesogenic food environment contributes to unhealthy eating behavior that leads to overweight and obesity. We demonstrate that exposure to hedonic information generally affects most individuals, whereas exposure to healthy information primarily affects individuals high in BMI. These findings have significant implications for understanding eating cognition and behavior. Previous research has established that exposure to food information in advertising, store placement, brand endorsements, and digital games can have considerable impact on consumer behavior. Norman et al (2016), for example, reviewed effects of exposure to hedonic food information in children and found it to have a causal, dose–response effect on preferences, choices, and consumption of unhealthy foods. Vukmirovic (2015) reviewed effects of exposure to both hedonic and healthy information in adults and found that both types of information affected food preference, choice, and consumption

Results

Discussion

Conclusion