What's in a name? A comparison of men's and women's judgements about food names and their nutrient contents

Abstract

The current study had two goals: first, to examine the stereotypes people have of particular foods by having them rate foods' names and nutrient descriptions; second, to determine if men and women rated food names and descriptions differently, and to examine the characteristics used to gauge salubrity. Of 33 foods presented, 16 had names rated better than their descriptions (a positive stereotype). In 11 cases, foods' descriptions were rated more positively than their names (a negative stereotype). Therefore, people have expectations about food names that do not match descriptions of foods' nutritional contents. Also, names of particular types of foods (e.g. fruits) were often perceived to be healthier than their corresponding descriptions. Women rated certain low-fat food names as more healthy compared to men. In addition, women tended to have bigger discrepancies between food names and their corresponding descriptions than did men, indicating that women were more likely to have biases about food names that did not match their ratings of the same foods' descriptions. Regression analyses indicated that women used fat content when judging healthfulness of food names, while men used fat content and vitamins and minerals. Men and women used similar characteristics when judging healthfulness of food descriptions.