Abstract
Although many people intend to eat healthily, their actual snacking behavior is often marked by a high consumption of calorie-dense, unhealthy snacks. One reason for this discrepancy may be that people tend to associate unhealthy food with tasty food, preventing them to follow up on their healthy snacking goals. To support people in snacking more healthily according to their intentions, there is an urgent need to better understand how people perceive the ‘ideal snack’, which may eventually be used to make healthy snacks more attractive. In the present research, we aim to elucidate conceptions of ideal snacks without loaded connotations of healthy and unhealthy, and subsequently compare them to features that are associated with healthy and unhealthy snacks. A Dutch community sample (N = 1087) was asked to generate conceptions of their ideal snack, and name features of what they considered to be (un)healthy snacks. The results revealed a multitude of idiosyncratic ideal snack conceptions. Commonalities were sensory characteristics and the notion of ‘healthy’. Healthy and unhealthy snacks were primarily associated with their positive or negative consequences for health. These findings may inform the design and marketing of healthy, nutritionally balanced snacks that are palatable and attractive to the very people that make food choices.
Highlights
Many people nowadays have adopted the goal of eating healthily
Unhealthy snacking has been related to the omnipresence of unhealthy foods in the so called “obesogenic” environment
We conclude that people hold such idiosyncratic conceptions of ideal snacks that they do not lend themselves for a classification into one or more clear general ideal snack conceptions
Summary
Many people nowadays have adopted the goal of eating healthily (de Ridder, Kroese, Evers, Adriaanse, & Gillebaart, 2017; Delaney & McCarthy, 2014). The marketing of unhealthy foods as tasty makes it very difficult for people to follow up on their healthy eating goals (Glanz, Basil, Maibach, Goldberg, & Snyder, 1998). This eventually results in diets of poorer nutritional quality, higher consumption of energy dense foods, and lower fruit and vegetable intake (Kourouniotis et al, 2016). Considering that many people want to eat more healthy foods (whole grains, fruits and vegetables, low in fat, Appetite 152 (2020) 104722 sugar, and salt), there is an urgent need for healthy snacks that make an appeal to taste, just as unhealthy snacks do, to support people in eating as they want (Mai & Hoffmann, 2015)
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